Takfiri

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Takfiri (Arabic: تَكْفِيرِيّ, takfīriyy lit. "excommunicational") is an Arabic and Islamic term denoting a Muslim who excommunicates one of his/her coreligionists, i.e. who accuses another Muslim of being an apostate.[1][2][3][4]

Since according to the traditional interpretations of Islamic law (sharīʿa) the punishment for apostasy is the death penalty,[3] and potentially a cause of strife and violence within the Muslim community (Ummah),[5] an ill-founded accusation of takfīr is considered a major forbidden act (haram) in Islamic jurisprudence,[6] with one ḥadīth declaring that one who wrongly declares another Muslim to be an unbeliever is himself an apostate.[7] Takfirism has been called a "minority ideology" which "advocates the killing of other Muslims declared to be unbelievers".[8]

The accusation itself is called takfīr, derived from the Arabic word kāfir ("unbeliever"), and is described as when "one who is a Muslim is declared impure."[9] An apostate is a murtad. In principle, in mainstream Sunnī Islam, the only group authorized to declare another Muslim a kāfir are the scholars of Islam (Ulama), and this is only done if all the prescribed legal precautions have been taken.[9] Traditionally, the declaration of takfīr was used against self-professed Muslims who denied one or more of the basic tenets of Islam. Throughout the history of Islam, Islamic denominations and movements such as Shīʿa Muslims and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community have been accused of takfīr and labeled as kuffār ("unbelievers") by Sunnī Muslims, becoming victims of religious discrimination, violence, and persecution perpetrated against them over the centuries.[3][8][10][11][12][13] The term Takfiri has also been pejoritavely deployed by Shia jihadist groups to demonise and justify violence against Sunni Muslims.[14][15]

In the history of Islam, a sect originating in the 7th century CE known as the Kharijites carried out takfīr against both Sunnī and Shīʿa Muslims, and became the main source of insurrection against the early caliphates for centuries.[16] Since the latter half of the 20th century, takfīr has also been used for "sanctioning violence against leaders of Islamic states"[17] who do not enforce sharia or are otherwise "deemed insufficiently religious".[18] This arbitrary application of takfīr has become a "central ideology"[17] of insurgent Wahhabi-Salafi jihadist extremist and terrorist groups,[10][19][20][21] particularly al-Qaeda and ISIL/ISIS/IS/Daesh,[3][10][19][22] who have drawn on the ideas of the medieval Islamic scholars Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Kathir, and those of the modern Islamist ideologues Sayyid Qutb and Abul A'la Maududi.[10][19][20] The practice of takfīr has been denounced as deviant by the mainstream branches of Islam and mainstream Muslim scholars such as Hasan al-Hudaybi (d. 1977) and Yusuf al-Qaradawi.[17]

  1. ^ Hunwick, Ed; Hunwick, J. O. (2000). "Takfīr". In Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E. J.; Heinrichs, W. P.; Lewis, B.; Pellat, Ch.; Bearman, P. J. (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Vol. 10. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers. doi:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_1154. ISBN 978-9004161214.
  2. ^ Adang, Camilla (2001). "Belief and Unbelief: Choice or Destiny?". In McAuliffe, Jane Dammen (ed.). Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān. Vol. I. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers. doi:10.1163/1875-3922_q3_EQCOM_00025. ISBN 978-90-04-14743-0.
  3. ^ a b c d Poljarevic, Emin (2021). "Theology of Violence-oriented Takfirism as a Political Theory: The Case of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)". In Cusack, Carole M.; Upal, M. Afzal (eds.). Handbook of Islamic Sects and Movements. Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion. Vol. 21. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers. pp. 485–512. doi:10.1163/9789004435544_026. ISBN 978-9004435544. ISSN 1874-6691.
  4. ^ Blanchard, Christopher (28 January 2009). "Islam: Sunnis and Shia" (PDF). fpc.state.gov. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service. Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 May 2022. Retrieved 10 August 2022.
  5. ^ Karawan, Ibrahim A. (1995). "Takfīr". In John L. Esposito. The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  6. ^ Brown, Michael (2010). Contending with Terrorism. p. 89.[ISBN missing]
  7. ^ Shiraz Maher, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea, Penguin UK (2017), p. 75 [ISBN missing]
  8. ^ a b Badara, Mohamed; Nagata, Masaki; Tueni, Tiphanie (June 2017). "The Radical Application of the Islamist Concept of Takfir" (PDF). Arab Law Quarterly. 31 (2). Leiden: Brill Publishers: 134–162. doi:10.1163/15730255-31020044. ISSN 1573-0255. Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 July 2019. Retrieved 25 October 2021.
  9. ^ a b Kepel, Gilles; Jihad: the Trail of Political Islam, London: I.B. Tauris, 2002, p. 31 [ISBN missing]
  10. ^ a b c d Baele, Stephane J. (October 2019). Giles, Howard (ed.). "Conspiratorial Narratives in Violent Political Actors' Language" (PDF). Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 38 (5–6). Sage Publications: 706–734. doi:10.1177/0261927X19868494. hdl:10871/37355. ISSN 1552-6526. S2CID 195448888. Retrieved 3 January 2022.
  11. ^ Rickenbacher, Daniel (August 2019). Jikeli, Gunther (ed.). "The Centrality of Anti-Semitism in the Islamic State's Ideology and Its Connection to Anti-Shiism". Religions. 10 (8: "The Return of Religious Antisemitism?"). Basel, Switzerland: MDPI: 483. doi:10.3390/rel10080483. ISSN 2077-1444.
  12. ^ Ghasemi, Faezeh (2020). Anti-Shiism Discourse (PhD). University of Tehran.
     • Ghasemi, Faezeh (2017). "Anti-Shiite and Anti-Iranian Discourses in ISIS Texts". Discourse. 11 (3): 75–96.
     • Matthiesen, Toby (21 July 2015). "The Islamic State Exploits Entrenched Anti-Shia Incitement". Sada. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
  13. ^ Uddin, Asma T. (2014). "A Legal Analysis of Ahmadi Persecution in Pakistan". In Kirkham, David M. (ed.). State Responses to Minority Religions. Ashgate Inform Series on Minority Religions and Spiritual Movements. Farnham, UK and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing/Routledge. pp. 81–98. ISBN 978-1-4724-1647-6. LCCN 2013019344.
  14. ^ Siegel, Alexandra (December 2015). "Sectarian Twitter Wars: Sunni-Shia Conflict and Cooperation in the Digital Age" (PDF). Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. p. 6. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 May 2023.
  15. ^ Y. Zelin, Smyth, Aaron, Phillip (29 January 2014). "The Vocabulary of Sectarianism". The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Archived from the original on 1 February 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. ^ Izutsu, Toshihiko (2006) [1965]. "The Infidel (Kāfir): The Khārijites and the origin of the problem". The Concept of Belief in Islamic Theology: A Semantic Analysis of Imān and Islām. Tokyo: Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies at Keio University. pp. 1–20. ISBN 9839154702.
  17. ^ a b c "Takfiri". Oxford Islamic Studies Online. Archived from the original on January 17, 2013. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
  18. ^ Nedza, Justyna (2016). "The Sum of Its Parts: The State as Apostate in Contemporary Saudi Militant Islamism". In Adang, Camilla; Ansari, Hassan; Fierro, Maribel; Schmidtke, Sabine (eds.). Accusations of Unbelief in Islam: A Diachronic Perspective on Takfīr. Islamic History and Civilization. Vol. 123. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers. pp. 304–326. doi:10.1163/9789004307834_013. ISBN 978-9004307834. ISSN 0929-2403.
  19. ^ a b c Badara, Mohamed; Nagata, Masaki (November 2017). "Modern Extremist Groups and the Division of the World: A Critique from an Islamic Perspective". Arab Law Quarterly. 31 (4). Leiden: Brill Publishers: 305–335. doi:10.1163/15730255-12314024. ISSN 1573-0255.
  20. ^ a b Jalal, Ayesha (2009). "Islam Subverted? Jihad as Terrorism". Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 239–240. doi:10.4159/9780674039070-007. ISBN 978-0674039070. S2CID 152941120.
  21. ^ Oliveti, Vincenzo. Terror's Source: The Ideology of Wahhabi-Salafism and its Consequences. Birmingham: Amadeus Books, 2002 [ISBN missing].
  22. ^ Julie Rajan, V. G. (2015). "Islamism, Al Qaeda, and Takfir". Al Qaeda's Global Crisis: The Islamic State, Takfir, and the Genocide of Muslims. Contemporary Terrorism Studies. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 44–102. ISBN 978-1138221802. LCCN 2014031954.