A Response to an Article on Dawn.com " On being ‘kafir’ "

Well...the article itself seemed quite fluffed up with sufism, which again itself is quite debatable in context of islam.

However, I'd like to shed light on a word in the english dictionary: "infidel" which means a non-believer in a certain religion.

The word can be defined using several dictionaries and encyclopedias, however every definition would depict the same concept.

To start of I'd like to point out that I'm a muslim and Chrisitans for instance would find me as an infidel for I do not believe in their religious teachings of the Holy Ghost, Jesus (son of God) and God (father of Jesus). For this reason, they have every right to call me or anyone else who rejects their belief of religion an "Infidel" and thus I would be someone who is not of their christian faith but another faith.

The word "Infidel" when translated in Arabic means the same as Kaafir.

The word Kafir is in no way used to abuse any person, but just to draw a boundary based on religious beliefs among people. I still have non-muslim friends in the US and even here where I live, but they would be Kaafir for me since they do not believe in my religion while I wouldn't mind if they call me a non-hindu, non-christian or infidel even for that matter since I only believe in the teachings of Islam.

The issue of, 'the Hindu youth who was a member of Youth Parliament, Pakistan.....also a passenger of the recent plane crash' I believe is another publicized matter for the press and the media to aggravate the differences among the public.

The plane crash was indeed tragic, while the devastations were even worse, you'll agree with me when you see pictures of bones and fingers on TV as the invetigating teams could not find what body parts belong to which human being. Upon being separated every corpse had to have a coffin which could be handed over in order to proceed with the funeral. Such body parts could not really be handed over in case of some passengers, as they might be unbearable for such families.

In such a scenario where most of the corpse belonged to muslim passangers, differentiating the corpse of non-muslims seemed rather important. While muslim corpse were being buried, perhaps in respect of the Hindu funeral traditions, the folks responsible might have decided to separate the corpse of this Hindu boy marking as Kafir so his family or anyone repsonsible might carry the homa rituals for delivering the corpse to its end.

the Original Article may be viewed on http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/editorial/on-being-kafir-380