Responses to the events
of September 11, 2001
| Muslim Peace Fellowship Responses to the events of September 11, 2001
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How to know if you act like a kafir The kafir is arrogant and feels contempt for those unlike himself, whom he holds to be inferior. The Devil was the first kafir and became so through his arrogant attitude toward Adam (as). (2:34; 7:76; 38:74; 39:59; 39:52; 40:76, 67:22) The human kafir becomes so by caring more for the advantagesof this world than for the consequences of his acts (al-akhirah). He denies that his acts have consequences, and so becomes unconscious. (6:130; 7:45; 7:101; 16:107; 41:7). Or he may insist that his acts can only have good consequences for him because he belongs to a certain elite category of persons (2:80; 2:111; 3:3). Wealth can incline people to kufr (9:85; 34:34) and God may grant more of it to the kafir (43:33). The kafir recognizes Gods blessings but refuses to attribute them to their source: he is an ingrate (16:22; 16:72; and definitional). The kafir rejects the khilafa, the role and responsibility, of a human being before God (32:10; 35:39). He invents things that he imagines are just as important as God (35:40). His judgments are not in accordance with what God has revealed (5:44). The kafir invents lies about God and calls truth a lie. (29:7) He is deluded (67:21) but calls truth a delusion (43.30). He makes Gods messengers out to be liars (10:2, 28:48; 43:24; many individual critiques) and scorns Gods signs (4:140; 29:47; 38:4; 39:59). He may make selfish, irrelevant demands of religion (5:102) or invent elaborate religious obligations and attribute them to God (5:103). The kafir hates simple sincerity (40:14) and so may be dangerous (5:67; 4:101, and historical). When he hears affirmed what he already privately knows to be the truth, he rejects the affirmation (2:89). He hopes to put out the divine light with a cloud of words (9:32; 61:8). The kafir is a tyrant (2:253; 11:19). He is envious of good that comes to others (13:105). He cannot be trusted (9:12). He manipulates sacred things so as to justify violence (9:37). He rejects mention of the Compassionate (21:36) or even the notion of the Compassionate (17:30). He is incited to fury by devils (19:83), and is zealous with the zealotry of profound ignorance (48:26). Belonging to a community that, in the past, has received a revelation is no guarantee against being a kafir. (2:105; 98:6; many individual critiques). If he does not reject God and Gods messengers altogether, the kafir tries to introduce false distinctions among them, accepting some but not others or elevating some over others, and seeking advantage for himself in that (2:104; 3:80; 4:150; 5:17-18). He is a partisan, but against the power that actually sustains him, (25:55), so his politics win him no divine patronage (47:11). The patrons he seizes upon are his own fantasies, which lead him into darkness (2:256). The kafirs among a people that has received revelation resent the idea that anyone else might have received it too. They treat grace like private property: this draws divine wrath upon them (2:90). Not only do they refuse to accept the divine guidance of other communities (e.g. 2:91, 2:111), but they quarrel about the ownership of Gods pleasure with people of their own community (e.g. 3:19). Meanwhile they themselves are utterly without guidance (2:264; 5:67; 16:107; 74:31). They are astray (40:74), their prayers are astray (13:14; 4-:50), and their plans are astray (40:25). They do not prosper (23:117; 28:77). The kafir is surrounded by Hell (9:49; 29:54). Whether he denies it or not, he is surrounded by God (2:19), who does not love him (3:32; 30:45). Only the kafir despairs of Gods kindness (12:86). |