Muslim group to stop blasting nonbelievers as 'infidels'

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In an effort to remove justification for terrorism, a major Muslim organization plans to abolish the term "infidel" as a reference to anyone who rejects Islamic beliefs.

The Nahdlatul Ulama, an Indonesian Muslim political party and the "world's largest moderate Muslim movement," according to the global Christian ministry Barnabas Fund, "has made a significant break with Islamic conservatism in an unprecedented decision to abolish the legal category of 'infidel' (kafir) for non-Muslims."

"The groundbreaking move, apparently aimed at sweeping away Islamic doctrines often used by extremists to justify terrorism, was first announced at the NU national conference in West Java earlier in 2019," the ministry said.

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"Around 20,000 Muslim scholars gathered to create and endorse a new Islamic legal framework (fiqh). The new rulings include a raft of changes embracing the modern definition of nation state, instead of a caliphate, and recognizing all as 'fellow citizens', irrespective of their religion or ethnicity, with equal rights and obligation to obey modern national laws," Barnabas Fund said.

"Kafir has become a very derogatory and insulting term for non-Muslims. In classical Islamic law they are to be killed. Christians and Jews, 'the people of the book,' have dhimmi status, which means they are not to be killed so long as they submit themselves to the Islamic authorities and follow a number of demeaning and humiliating regulations that show their second-class status," the group said.

Barnabas noted Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim nation and the NU claims to have more than 90 million members.

"Its revisions of Islamic doctrine and legal rulings are expected to reverberate throughout the Muslim world," Barnabas said.

The move contrasts with a report Saturday that Muslims in the Turkey-backed Free Syria Army were threatening "to execute" any Kurdish "infidel" they found.

The Religion of Peace website explains the Quran "contains at least 109 verses that speak of war with nonbelievers, usually on the basis of their status as non-Muslims. Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding."

WND reported last month that while ISIS has lost much of its territory from its peak during the Obama administration when it was crucifying, burning and beheading Christians, its protégé in Africa, Boko Haram, is becoming more deadly.

Turkish journalist Uzay Bulut, a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, wrote that Boko Haram has expanded from Nigeria, where the government appears unable to cope, to Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

Bulut noted that suicide bombings and other deadly attacks committed by Boko Haram terrorists over the past decade have claimed the lives of tens of thousands and displaced 2 million others. =