Chapter Fourteen

is synonymous with the decline of the Islamic shariah and the Muslim millat, is certainly baseless. Such a thing has never happened in the past, and nor can it ever happen in the future. The period of the four rightly-guided Caliphs came to an end, but the peaceful expansion of Islam still carried on. The journey of Islam continued in the same way even after the Umayyad and Abbasid Empires collapsed, and also after Muslim rule in Spain and that of the Fatimids in Egypt and the Mughals in India ended. The decline of these Muslim dynasties could not, and did not, cause any decline of Islam. In the same way, in the 20th century a number of extremist ideologies emerged—for instance, Communism, Nazism, Nationalism, and so on. But the end result of all of these was that the law of nature rebutted their extremist aspects, and, finally, whatever survived of them was what was desirable according to the law of nature. Thise eternal law removes extremist ideologies and replaces them with moderate ideas. The Concepts of Kufr and Kafir Some people claim that the notions that Muslims have of kufr and kafir are a permanent stumbling block to communal harmony. However, this claim is based on a misunderstanding. It has nothing to do with the Quran. The literal meaning of the word kufr is to ‘deny’, and kafir means ‘one who denies’. It is important to note that these two terms are used in the Quran in the context of narratives about the prophets. Moreover, kufr is a trait of a particular individual; it is not the ethnic or inherited name for a social group. The investigation of kufr or ‘denial’ with regard to a particular person happens when he has been invited to the faith in the manner that the prophets did, and this is carried on till its culmination by presenting proper evidence and requisite proofs—or what is called itmam al-hujjah. Without following this prophetic approach