Takfir

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Takfir (Arabic: تَكْفِير, romanized: takfīr) is an Arabic and Islamic term which denotes excommunication from Islam of one Muslim by another, i.e. accusing another Muslim to be an apostate.^[1][2][3] The word is found neither in the Quran nor in the ḥadīth literature; instead, kufr ("unbelief") and kāfir ("unbeliever") and other terms employing the same triliteral root k-f-r appear.^[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 takfir accusation was a major forbidden act (haram) in Islamic jurisprudence,^[6] with one hadith declaring that one who wrongly declares a Muslim an unbeliever is himself not an apostate but rather committed minor shirk.^[7] 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.^[8] Traditionally, the only group authorized to declare another Muslim a kāfir are the scholars of Islam (Ulama), which affirm that all the prescribed legal precautions should be taken before declaring takfīr,^[9] and that those who profess the Islamic faith should be exempt.^[5]

Starting in the mid-to-late 20th century, some individuals and organizations in the Muslim world began to apply takfīr accusations not only against those that they perceived as stray deviant and lapsed Muslims, but also governments and in some cases, societies as well.^[3][10][11] In his widely influential book Milestones, Egyptian Islamist ideologue Sayyid Qutb preached that governments ruling the Muslim world had fallen into a state of collective apostasy or jahiliyah (a state of pre-Islamic ignorance) several centuries ago, having abandoned the use of sharīʿa law, without which (Qutb held) Islam cannot exist.^[3][10] Qutb affirmed that since Muslim government leaders (along with being cruel and evil) were actually not Muslims but apostates preventing the revival of Islam, the use of "physical force" should be used to remove them.^[3][10] This radical Islamist ideology, called "takfirism", has been widely held and applied by numerous Islamic extremists, terrorists, and jihadist organizations in the late 20th and early 21st-centuries, to varying degrees.^[3][10][11]

Since the latter half of the 20th century, takfīr has also been used for "sanctioning violence against leaders of Islamic states"^[12] who do not enforce sharia or are otherwise "deemed insufficiently religious".^[11] Politically motivated arbitrary declarations of takfīr became a "central ideology" of Egyptian-based Jihadist organizations,^[12] which were inspired by 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][13][14] Some Salafi jihadist insurgent organizations such as Takfir wal-Hijra, GIA, Boko Haram,^[10][13] and the Islamic State,^[3][10] have been engaged in radical Takfiri discourse. Their practice of takfīr has been denounced as deviant by the mainstream schools of Islam and various leaders such as Hasan al-Hudaybi (d. 1977) and Yusuf al-Qaradawi.^[12]