Islam and the Quran

It is also worth noting that in future battles, no prisoners of war were taken in by the Muslims. The Prophet Muhammad taught believers to be virtuous and compassionate towards fellow human beings. He preached selfless service and development of piety and modesty amongst individuals. He believed that a Muslim is soft, simple and lenient. He cautioned Muslims from falling into extremism: Those who go to extremes are doomed. (Sahih Muslim, hadith no. 2670) Who is a kafir? The word kafir has never been used in the Quran to mean either a non-Muslim or an infidel. In fact, this term was applied solely to contemporaries of the Prophet. Kafir (pl. kuffar) was used to refer to those people who had completely understood the true message of Islam and refused to believe in it due to stubbornness. The Prophet peacefully conveyed to them the divine message over a long period of time, but they refused to follow the truth of his words. God, therefore, declared those people, the contemporaries of the Prophet as kuffar that is, the deniers. The use of the word kafir for anyone other than the contemporaries of the Prophet is not permissible. The most important point to be grasped on this subject is that the word kafir denotes an individual rather than a certain race or community. It is in no way a group appellation. However, the generally held view is that one who is not a Muslim is kafir. This is an entirely baseless supposition. The word kafir is not synonymous with non-Muslim or a non-Muslim community. Being a kafir is a matter of the heart, which God alone knows and therefore no person has any right to accuse a fellow human as being