When the al Shabaab jihadi group from Somalia attacked the mall in Kenya, they gathered the crowd together and asked who were Muslims and let them go. According to the media, they then started killing the non-Muslims who were left. But non-Muslims is not the word what the terrorists would have used. No, they would have called them Kafirs (actually they would have called them the Arabic plural of kafir, kuffar. Kafirs is the standard English plural form). Why did members of al Shabaab do this? Why did they ask the Muslims to leave and keep the Kafirs and start killing them? Let’s start with the word terrorists. Members of al Shabaab are not terrorists, they are jihadists or mujahedeen. That is what they call themselves.
So what difference does it make which words we use? Non-Muslim or Kafir? Terrorists, militants, jihadists or mujahedeen? It makes all the difference in the world. You cannot think precisely with imprecise words and a Kafir is much more than non-Muslim.
The word “non-Muslim” does not imply anything, except not being a believer in Islam.

READ MORE: Bill Warner, Director, Center for the Study of Political Islam
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