1) Infidel - Origin and Usage.2) A Wondrous Reality!!
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In the name of Allah, the Most-Merciful, the All-Compassionate
"May the Peace and Blessings of Allah be Upon You"
Bismillah Walhamdulillah Was Salaatu Was Salaam 'ala Rasulillah
As-Salaam Alaykum Wa-Rahmatullahi Wa-Barakaatuh
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"Let there arise out of you a group of people inviting to all that is good (Islam), Enjoining Al-Ma‘roof (i.e. Islamic Monotheism and all that Islam orders one to do) and Forbidding Al-Munkar (polytheism and disbelief and all that Islam has forbidden).And it is they who are the successful: Aal ‘Imraan 3:1”
1) Infidel - Origin and Usage
Real Muslims don't use "infidel" for non-Muslims in any fashion or state. They use the word Kaffir (disbeliever) instead, and it is the word that is also mentioned in the Quran when referring to the disbelievers of God. The word “Infidel” is used only by misinformed Muslims, western media “linking” it to “extremist” Muslims or by "al-Qaeda", which is believed (by some) to be nothing more than bogey group created by western Intelligence for the convenience of furthering western interests.
The Islamic word used in Arabic to refer to non-Muslims is Kafir. As Wikipedia states:
Kafir (Arabic: ???? k?fir; plural ????? kuff?r) is an Arabic term used in a Islamic doctrinal sense, usually translated as "unbeliever" or "disbeliever". The term refers to a person who rejects God or who hides, denies, or "covers" the truth.
The word k?fir is the active participle of the root K-F-R "to cover". As a pre-Islamic term it described farmers burying seeds in the ground, covering them with soil while planting. Thus, the word k?fir implies the meaning "a person who hides or covers".
In Islamic parlance, a k?fir is a word used to describe a person who rejects Islamic faith, i.e. "hides or covers [viz., the truth]"
Infidel
These usages are from the first definition: one who does not believe (what the speaker holds to be) the true religion; an unbeliever
- Tyndale, 2 Cor. VI:15, (1526): "what parte hath he that beleveth with an infidele"
- Tim. v.8: (no date) "the same denyeth the fayth and is worsse than an infydell"
These usages are from the second definition: an adherent of a religion opposed to Christianity, especially a Mohammedan or Saracen:
- Malory, Arthur (1470-1485): "two honored Saracens who are infydeles"
- Fabyan, Chron. (1494): "if any thyge be done to honoure of the Cristen, and reproche of infydelys it is most lykely to be done by vs."
- Hall, Chron., "infideles and unchristened peoples"
- The Book of Common Prayer (1548-1549): "have mercy upon all jewes, turkes, infidels, and heretikes"
- Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (1595): "Daniel, Jew, now Infidell, I haue thee on the hip"
There is much more information in the OED, but no mention of when Muslims first used it to refer to non-Muslims.
Infidel
One who does not believe in the prevailing religious faith; especially, one who does not believe in the divine origin and authority of Christianity; a Mohammedan; a heathen; a freethinker. ... Infidel is used by English writers to translate the equivalent word used Mohammedans in speaking of Christi...
Found on http://www.mondofacto.com/facts/dictiona
The origin of infidel lies in Latin in (not) and fidelis “faithful,” the term originally denoting a non-Christian, especially a Muslim. The word is defined with rather dry wit in the Oxford English Dictionary as “One who does not believe in (what the speaker holds to be) the true religion; an ‘unbeliever.’” In its early stages it denoted “an adherent of a religion opposed to Christianity, especially a Mahommedan,” being so used in Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (1485) in a reference to “two honderd sarasyns or infydels” (Curiously, saracen is actually the older term.) It became common in the Middle Ages to denote these outsiders impersonally as “the infidel” or “the heathen,” used of both Muslims and Jews, as if these religions were of no validity, so that the Crusades were commonly styled “the war against the infidel or heathen.” In the Canterbury Tales , Chaucer’s exemplary Knight had “foughten for oure faith” extensively against the “hethen” (ll. 62-66). Yet two of Chaucer’s most respectable pilgrims, the Man of Law and the Prioress, tell tales charged with religious animosity, the first against heathens and pagans, the second against “the cursed Jews.”
Subsequently infidel was applied to followers of other religions in general. In William Tyndale’s translation of 2 Corinthians 6:15 (ca. 1526), the term has the stronger sense of a person of no religion, an atheist. In The Merchant of Venice (1596), a play dealing directly with anti-Semitic attitudes, Gratiano says in a tense moment of legal tussling to Shylock, “Now, infidel, I have thee on the hip” (IV i 344). However, in the same play the curious character Launcelot Gobbo, “clown and servant to Shylock,” says a poignant farewell to Jessica: “Most beautiful pagan, most sweet Jew!” (II iii 11). In the post-Renaissance period, both pagan and heathen started to be used in a more secular fashion. Shakespeare extended the sense of pagan to mean “a prostitute” ( Henry IV Part II , II ii 68) while Alexander Pope satirized the sexual promiscuity of a society lady styled Narcissa for being “a very heathen in the carnal part” (“Of the Characters of Women,” I, l.67).
With the general secularization of Western society and the consequent decline of religion as a social force, all these terms have declined in currency and potency in the West. However, infidel is being brought back into currency as a propagandist term against the West, especially America.
Read more: Heathen, Infidel, and Pagan - Especially, Religion, Religions, Term, Middle, and “the http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/711/Heathen-Infidel-and-Pagan.html#ixzz1XExJwTdT
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2) A Wondrous Reality!!