Propaganda of the World’s Largest Islamic Group Wanting Muslims to Stop Calling People ‘Infidels’

  I received an email with a question about the world’s largest Islamic group, Nahdlatul Ulama or “NU.”  A friend was confused after reading an article about them, and so her question to me was: “They’re not allowed to question the holy Qur’an, right?”  She had read online an article entitled “The World’s Largest Islamic Group Wants Muslims to Stop Saying ‘Infidel’” written by Patrick Winn on March 8, 2019 on “PRI’s The World.” I read the article so I could respond to the email question.

   The word “infidel” is mentioned in the Qur’an over 200 times, but the NU Muslims do not want to use it.  Instead, they desire to replace it with the word “muwathin,” simply because most of the Muslims in Indonesia do not speak the Arabic language.  Had they known that the word muwathin is the word “citizen,”  they would not have accepted this propaganda. Let us see how we can rewrite the Qur’an by removing the word “kafir” and replacing it with the word “citizen.” 

   In Qur’an 2:6 Allah said: “Surely those who kafaro (became infidels, non-Arabic word of Hebrew/Syriac origin), if you warn them or do not warn them, it is the same; they will not believe.”

   The meaning of the word “kafaro” is & ...