| Answer: A person becomes a Kāfir
when he denies the truth in spite of being convinced that it is the truth. Since
it is humanly impossible for a person to determine whether some person is
denying the truth or not, it is only on the basis of information provided by the
Almighty that a person can be called a Kāfir. In the times of His Rusul, He
chose to impart this information to his Rusul through Wahī; however, after the
departure of the last Rasūl Muhammad (sws), people who have knowingly denied the
truth cannot be pinpointed since the institution of Wahī has been terminated. No
Muslim preacher is in a position to reveal the truth in a manner a Rasūl is able
to, nor can he ascertain who among his addressees is guilty of knowingly denying
the truth. After the Prophet (sws), only on the Day of Judgement will it now be
known whether a particular person is a Kāfir or not.
It is evident from this
explanation that the Christians and Jews and followers of other religions in
times after the Prophet (sws) are not Kāfirs; the right name for them is
non-Muslims. As far as Christians are concerned, it is to be noted that they are
basically followers of monotheism. They never admit to polytheism, though they
are involved in it. A person becomes a polytheist when he openly admits that he
is a polytheist, even though he may be practising polytheism in some form; the
reason is that a person might be doing something wrong without realizing what he
is doing; Christians, whether of today or from the period of Jesus (sws), have
never admitted to polytheism. Trinity to them is in accordance with monotheism.
Of course, we do not agree with them, but unless they realize it, we can only
say that in spite of claiming to be monotheists they are involved in polytheism.
Their case is the case of a Muslim who goes to the grave of a saint to ask him
to grant a wish; we shall not call such a Muslim a polytheist; we shall tell him
that what he is doing is something against monotheism to which he himself
strongly claims adherence. Similarly, we shall not call Christians polytheists,
but we will keep telling them that what they are doing is not in accordance with
monotheism.
It is precisely for this reason that the Qur’ān never
referred to the People of the Book as polytheists though they subscribed to
certain blatant forms of polytheism. The Qur’ān only called the Ismaelites as
polytheists because they admittedly subscribed and testified to the creed of
polytheism. They strongly advocated that polytheism was the very religion the
Almighty had revealed and claimed that they were the strong adherents to this
religion. |