Glossary of Terms

Ahādīth - See Hadīth

Ahl al-Sunna wal-Jamā‘a - As a countervailing school of thought to the Rationalist schools (such as the Mu‘tazila) the Ahl al-Sunna wal-Jamā‘a pursued the more ‘Arab,’ textually-founded sciences of Hadīth scholarship, in which the scholar’s effort was invested in the arenas of grammar and morphology (to elucidate the precise lexicographical meaning of the text) and isnād (to establish the canonicity of the text based on the moral probity and veracity of the chain of transmitters). In this enterprise the exercise of Reason, of speculation as to the theological significance of the Text in the light of other factors (such as context) or qiyās (analogical reasoning and logical deduction) was heavily circumscribed.

‘Aqīda - Creed (e.g Sunna as opposed to Shī‘a, or Ahmadiyya); the basic articles of faith.

Badā’ - ‘manifestation’ is a Shīʽa doctrine defined as the happening of an incident that God had willed to take place in a certain way, in contrast to the way in which it actually occurred as a result of God changing His mind, or altering His decision in the light of subsequent events. The controversy arises due to the indication of possible changes in God’s attributes of omniscience, will and creation. The Sunnis accept naskh (‘abrogation’) on the grounds that this applies to legal rulings alone, whereas they reject badā’ for its implications for God’s omniscience.

Caliphate – The rule of a caliph (from the Arabic khalīfa ‘successor’), the first system of government established in Islam by the successors of the Prophet Muhammad, as a claimed continuation of the political and religious system which he had established. After the first four Rāshidūn (‘rightly guided’) caliphs, Abū Bakr, ‘Umar ibn al-Khattāb, ‘Uthmān ibn ‘Affān and ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib, the Caliphate was claimed by dynasties such as the Umayyads, the Abbasids and the Ottomans and by other competing dynasties. The office of Caliphate is a title with a resonance that goes back to the earliest years of Islam, so the appeal to its restoration following its dissolution by Kamal Atatürk on March 3rd 1924 has all the glamour of authenticity about it. Modern theories, promoted by Islamists, of the Islamic state and the contemporary emphasis that ‘Islam is a faith and a state’ came about as a result of its disintegration. But these discussions demand a specific reading of history that isolates facts and events that do not accord with the desired narrative. Historians are divided on whether the Caliphate existed properly at all after 661, the year of the death of ‘Alī, the last of the ‘Rightly Guided’. Nevertheless the Islamists take the maximalist view that the office extended from its foundation in 622 to 1924, in order to maintain the case for the Umma, governed by this one central authority who is held to be the legitimate successor to the Prophet.

Darūra - ‘Necessity’, as a legal category overriding other objections, in that the welfare, progress and primacy of the Muslims must take precedence over all other considerations.

Da‘wā - Proselytism.

Dhimma - the ‘covenant of protection’. The ahl al-dhimma (‘people of the dhimma’) are free non-Muslim subjects living in Muslim countries who enjoy protection and safety and the freedom of worship within limits. They also retain the right to manage affairs pertaining to personal status (marriage, divorce, etc.) according to their own laws, but enjoy no political rights. Since the state is theoretically theocratic, the ahl al-dhimma are outside the full community of the state. In return they were expected to pay higher taxes in form of the capital tax (jizya), to refrain from insulting Islam, or building new places of worship or restoring them, conduct their services in silence, and were to dress in a distinctive fashion so as not to be mistaken for Muslims. Dhimma status was originally modelled on the contracts between Muhammad and Jewish and Christian tribes of Arabia during the first decade after the Hijra, by which equality was practiced within the Muslim community, but did not extend to non-Muslims. The dhimma is a compact which a believer agrees to respect and the violation of which makes him liable to dhamm (blame). Jurists such as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya regarded those agreements as a punishment on non-believers, basing their case on the Qur’ānic sūra of Al-Tawba [IX:29] they are to pay tribute out of the hand and be humbled (يُعۡطُواْ ٱلۡجِزۡيَةَ عَن يَدٍ۬ وَهُمۡ صَـٰغِرُونَ) – a position which influenced centuries of tension in communal relationships. Over history the humiliation purpose of the dhimma was emphasized – houses had to be inferior to those of Muslims, dhimmīs were not allowed to exercise authority over Muslims, they could not testify against them, they had to stand up in presence of Muslims, and address them in low tones, and give them the right of way in narrow streets. The jizya was paid in a ceremony that included a slap on the face of the dhimmī to publicly humiliate him. The dhimma system on the status of non-Muslims is a fundamental part of Sharī‘a, and presents a contradiction to modern concepts of nationality, citizenship or the resident alien and is incompatible with the relevant standards of international human rights law.

Faqīh - (pl. fuqahā’) a practitioner of fiqh (qv).

Fiqh - The term is often used synonymously with Sharī’a; the main difference being that Sharī‘a bears a closer link with divine revelation, whereas fiqh mainly consists of the works of religious scholars and jurists. Fiqh requires knowledge of the masā’il and the dalā’il, and therefore the usūl al-fiqh (q.v.):

- Masā’il issues under discussion

- Dalā’il evidences

- Ahkām rulings, conclusions

Fitna - ‘Social disorder’, most commonly associated with matters that place stresses upon or test a Muslim’s certainty about his or her faith. This may therefore imply elements of ‘temptation’ and ‘fascination’. The term also at times denotes ‘sedition’ as something affecting the political cohesion of the Muslim community.

Hadd - (pl. hudūd) literally meaning ‘limit’, or ‘restriction’, is the class of punishments under Sharī‘a that are fixed for certain crimes that are considered to be ‘claims of God.’ They include theft, fornication, consumption of alcohol, and apostasy and unlike the other classes of punishment (qisas ‘retaliation’; dia ‘blood money/ransom’; ta‘zīr ‘corporal punishment’) which were up to the discretion of the injured parties, was an obligation upon the sovereign to administer. They may take the form of capital punishment, amputation or flogging. Only free, adult Muslim men are eligible to testify in hudūd cases and the punishments vary according to the offender: non-Muslims generally receive harsher punishments than Muslims, slaves receive harsher punishments than free people, and in the case of adultery married people receive harsher punishments than unmarried.

Hadīth - ‘Conversations’, ‘Traditions’ recorded of the Prophet. One of the three pillars of the Sunna (the others being the Qur’ān and the Sīra or biography literature) which forms the basis upon which Islamic law is founded. Since the Qur’ān text is limited in size and scope, and contains little detail on which to found an administrative system, Muslim jurists concentrated their researches on the corpus of Ahādīth (pl. of Hadīth) that accumulated after the Prophet’s death. The sheer quantity of the material has necessarily incorporated much that is spurious, or politically tendentious, and the work of major hadīth scholars was to evaluate the corpus, dividing the texts into ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ depending on the reliability of the isnād (‘chain’ of transmission). Al-jarh wa-taʽdīl refers to this process of testing the probity of the hadith reporters as an indicator of their reliability. Hadīth types may be broken down into the following:

-          Mursal: a hadīth which a Tābi‘ī (qv) narrates directly from the Prophet

-          Musnad: a hadīth whose chain of transmission is connected to the Prophet.

-          Marfūʻ: a hadīth which a Companion narrates directly from the Prophet .

-          Sahīh (al-Isnād): a hadīth whose chain of narrators is considered to be without fault.

-          Daʻīf: a hadīth which is held to contain weaknesses, such as a break in the chain of its transmission or a suspected break due to confusion of dates, or a doubt cast on the memory capacity of one of the narrators.

-         Mutawātir - A hadith of which the narrators constitute a group or large number, on the understanding that it is considered impossible for them all to agree to transmit a lie.

-          Āhād – (or khabar wāhid) a hadith where there is only a single narrator for it, or a single, geographically isolated group of narrators for it, thus disqualifying it from being considered mutawātir.

-          Lam yukhrijāh: a hadīth not included by either of the two foremost medieval scholars Imām al-Bukhārī or Imām Muslim in their compendious collections of hadīth evaluated as to their soundness.

An important feature of this evaluation is that the authoritativeness of the chain depended on the moral probity of the transmitter, rather than the moral or ethical content of the hadīth, on the grounds that the start and end point of moral evaluation is the Prophet himself tout cour.

Hākimiyya - Sovereignty.’ Most often in the term: tawhīd al-hākimiyya, ‘Oneness of sovereignty’, the doctrine whereby God is singled out as the starting point for all government and legislation. The doctrine is placed in direct opposition to non-Islamic legislative systems, with all the necessary ramifications for religious pluralism and international law. Islamist radicals lay particular stress on their belief that tawhīd al-hākimiyya does not constitute a category separate from ‘monotheism’ as such, fearing that this would open the door to subjective, modernizing tendencies leading to the legitimization of the nation state. In essence the Sovereignty of God is opposed to the sovereignty of the people. The term is held to derive from the Qur’ānic phrase: “hukm (‘authority’) is for God alone” (Qur’ān, XII,40). It is perceived in a much more absolute way than within, for example, 19th and 20th century neo-orthodox Christian or Jewish thinking, which included the idea of ‘man as a caretaker’ and the ‘partnership between man and God’. This held no discrepancy between religion and politics, but accepted the two sovereignties as working in partnership. Among liberal Islamic thinkers something similar is postulated; they argue that man is khalīfa (‘substitute’) of God on earth.

Hijra - ‘Emigration’, ‘Flight’; the recognition of the Muslim’s state of alienation and his flight into isolation, as part of the self-purification process. The model is taken from the life of the Prophet Muhammad, and the Jihadi is consciously aiming to reproduce, in personal miniature, the sīra of the Prophet, whose emigration from Makka to Madina marked the beginning of the new Islamic order, the order to which he aspires as his constant model. This sequence, modelled on the pattern of salvation: Da‘wā, Hijra and Umma, is a constant point of reference and validation for Jihadist literature, and serves time and again as an interpretative sub-text to their activism. Jihadists argue that the da‘wā period is past, and that the hijra should be seen not just in spiritual terms, but as a geographical, physical action (such as Bin Laden’s hijra to the hills of Tora Bora.

Hisba - The principle that legal action in defense of the public interest may be taken, even though the individual making the charge has not personally suffered injury or harm. The function of the muhtasib is one of calling society and individuals to account, aiming at the eradication of social evils and improving public morality by promoting and enforcing that which ‘Commands Right and Forbids Wrong.’

Ijtihād - literally. 'exertion', and technically the effort a jurist makes in order to deduce the law, which is not self-evident, from its sources. Legal reasoning independent of what is literally prescribed by scripture.

‘Īsā ( عيسى ) - The term given in the Islamic faith for Jesus. Jews and Christians recognize in the Greek form of the name Ιησους (Jēsūs) – or in the oblique case Ιησου (Jēsū) – the Hebrew name יהושוע (Y’hōshū‘) in its later Hebrew and Aramaic equivalent ישוע (Yēshū‘). The Hebrew name parses grammatically and has a meaning: ‘God is Salvation.’ There is no recognised grammatical parsing for the Arabic name.

Islamic Awakening - (Al-Sahwa al-Islāmiyya). As a result of the turmoil of the 1960s in the Arab Muslim world where the Arab defeat in the June 1967 Six Day War highlighted how the post-colonial period and Arab nationalism had long been failing to deliver its promised benefits, humiliation and frustration galvanized interest in an alternative ideological route re-invigorated by orthodoxy. This came to be known as al-Sahwa al-Islāmiyya (‘the Islamic Awakening’), where reform on religious practice and social issues blended with matters of overtly political import. The constant themes of the various configurations of the Sahwa movement was the conspiracy against Islam, the insidious attempts of Muslim regimes, encouraged by their western masters, to secularize the Islamic Nation, derail its salvific mission and emasculate its political potential. As an antidote to these perceived attacks it laid emphasis on the need for the unity of the Muslim umma, for the re-education of all Muslims in the Salafist conception of the ‘aqīda, and the re-building of excluding cultural walls through the re-invigoration of the doctrine of al-walā’ wal-barā’ (qv). Though initially an intellectually-focused reform movement the trend became activist and dominated university campuses in the 1970s and 1980s, until it was finally in a position by the 1990s to configure and lead an Islamist political opposition to the Saudi regime. Its analysis of the failure of contemporary Muslim regimes to return society to the true path and the implications this held for legitimacy and right to rule would later come to crystallize in the mental universe of the jihadist.

Jāhiliyya - ‘Ignorance’. The term was originally understood historically, to denote the unenlightened, pre-Islamic age but under the influence of Islamist ideologues such as Abū al-‘Alā’ al-Mawdūdī and Sayyid Qutb it has come to mean, for the Islamists, a contemporary ‘pagan’ state of mind or a political system that is insufficiently ‘Islamic’.

Jizya - Under Islamic law, jizya is a per capita tax levied on a section of an Islamic state’s non-Muslim citizens. That is, every free adult male member of the ahl al-kitāb (‘People of the Book’), although this was later extended to all non-Muslims. Slaves, women, children, the old, the infirm, the poor and monastic communities were all exempt from the tax, unless any of them was deemed independent and wealthy. Jizya was paid in exchange for the dhimma whereby non-Muslim citizens were permitted to practice their faith, to enjoy a measure of communal autonomy, and enjoy the state’s protection from external threat and to be exempted from military service and the zakat taxes obligatory upon Muslims. However, these exemptions were not always observed and were discarded entirely by the Shāfi‘ī School of Law. It constituted material proof of the non-Muslims’ acceptance of subjection to the state and its laws, and when abused was accompanied by disdainful behavior intended to re-enforce the inferior status of the dhimma communities.

Kalām - ‘Ilm al-Kalām denotes scholastic theology, the discipline of seeking theological principles through dialectic, that is, the seeking of philosophical demonstrations to confirm religious principles. The ‘Ilm al-Kalām developed as a rational theology, practiced by mutakallimīn. Its place in Islamic history is controversial, and modern Salafi scholars outlaw it.

Khārijī(te) - (pl. khawārij). ‘Exiter’ or ‘Seceder’. The term refers back to an incident in early Islamic history in which there was a military standoff on the question of the succession following the death of the Prophet Muhammad. A party of ‘Ali’s supporters objected to his conceding to the idea of arbitration since it implied that his authority was therefore not divinely ordained, absolute and non-negotiable. The objectors’ starting point was the Qur’ānic verse: وَمَن لَّمْ يَحْكُم بِمَا أَنزَلَ اللّهُ فَأُوْلَـئِكَ هُمُ الْكَافِرُونَ: ‘Whose judgeth not by that which Allah hath revealed: such are the disbelievers’ [al-Mā’ida, V,44] and, remaining intransigent on the issue of kufr dūna kufr (see below) they ‘exited’ (kharajū) the arena. From this is taken the term khawārij (‘Kharijites’), a term which subsequently came to denote those whose excess takes them out of the fold of Islam.

Minhaj - ‘Method’, ‘methodology’. E.g.: ‘Minhaj (methodology) of Salaf is to place texts over intellect and kalām (theological rhetoric)’ [See Salafism]

Misyār marriage’ - Defined as “traveler’s” marriage, a legal Sunni Muslim contractual procedure but one which usually demands the waiver by the ‘wife’ of rights such as accommodation, maintenance or the husband’s staying overnight with her.

Mu‘attila - see Ta‘tīl

Muhtasib - see Hisba.

Mu‘tazila - The rationalist Mu‘tazilī school is an Islamic school of speculative theology which flourished in the cities of Basra and Baghdad during the 8th–10th centuries. The adherents of the Mu‘tazilī school held that ‘the Speech of Allah Most High is created, invented, and brought into being’ in that, because of the perfect unity and eternal nature of God, the Qur'an must therefore have been created, as it could not be co-eternal with God. From this premise, the injunctions of God must be accessible to rational thought and inquiry: since knowledge is derived from reason, reason, rather than sacred precedent, is the ‘final arbiter’ in distinguishing right from wrong. What is obligatory in religion is therefore only obligatory ‘by virtue of reason.’ This is opposed to the position of the textual literalists who held the extreme position that ‘the alphabetical characters, the materials on which they are written, the colours in which they are written, and all that is between the two covers [of the volumes of Qur’ān] is beginning-less and pre-existent.’

Mutakallimūn/īn - (see Kalām)

Muthbita - see Ta‘tīl

Nahda – ‘Resurgence’, ‘renaissance’, ‘efflorescence’. As a historical term it generally refers to the period of the late 19c and early 20c in where a movement of intellectual modernization and reform took hold at first Egypt and subsequently the Ottoman Levant. However, the religious, intellectual and cultural advances were not fully indigenized into Muslim societies and remained the occupation of the (mainly western-) educated élites, with the result that its achievements have been subjected to constant challenge from Islamists and Salafists.

Sahāba – (sing. Sahabī). The ‘Companions’, disciples, scribes and family of the Prophet Muhammad.  Their testimony was drawn upon concerning the words and deeds of the Prophet, the revelation of the Qur'an and important matters of paradigmatic Islamic practice. This testimony in the form of hadīth formed the basis of the developing Islamic Sunna (‘tradition’).

Sahwa / Sahwist – (see Islamic Awakening)

Salafist – The term comes from al-salaf al-sālih or al-salaf al-sālihūn, the ‘pious predecessors’ of the first generations of Muslims who, due to their proximity to the model for living set by the Prophet Muhammad, are held to constitute a paradigm for the Muslim for all time. As a term Salafist mostly overlaps with the ‘Muslim fundamentalist’, but denotes a particular intensification of the tendency, and intentionally focuses upon the legitimizing effect of adherence to a paradigmatic community. Salafists are in unanimous agreement concerning the creed (‘aqīda) that defines their ideologies. The salient points of their approach come down to the following principles:

  • return to the authentic beliefs and practices of the first three ‘generations’
  • expel practices considered to be bida‘, (‘unacceptable innovations’) that had accrued over the centuries since this pristine period of Islam
  • engage actively against manifestations of Disbelief such as Shi‘ism or anything that constitutes shirk (‘associationism’, effectively polytheism, although Christianity is also subsumed under this)
  • lay emphasis instead on the following categories of tawhīd:

- tawhīd al-rubūbiyya (‘Oneness of Lordship’) – denoting God’s exclusive sovereignty in the Universe as its sole Creator and Sustainer. To attribute any of these power to other than Him constitutes kufr;

- tawhīd al-ulūhiyya (‘Oneness of Godship’) – denoting God’s rights to be the exclusive object of worship, failing which the perpetrator is a kāfir. The category is pointedly targeted at saint-worship or the some Sufi views of saints as intermediaries between God and man;

- tawhīd al-asmā’ wa-l-sifāt (‘Oneness of the Names and Attributes’) – denoting God’s uniqueness with regard to the way He is depicted in the Qur’ān or the Hadīth, without any debate as to their meaning, that is, without distortion (tahrīf) or negation (ta‘tīl) of them, and without any attempt at explaining how they are (takyīf) or employing likeness or any metaphorical interpretation (tamthīl).

As may be seen from this, while a large part of their effort is expended on ‘aqīda it is not an exercise in theological thinking as such, so much as a defense of the fixèd marks of this theology as they see it, and mostly in the face of non-Salafists. Paradoxical as it may sound, the purpose of the Salafist definition of theology is to establish that there is no more theology. Speculation as to the nature of God, and as to how to approach knowledge of God’s purposes is considered by Salafists to be a closed issue, having been settled by scholars of the stature of Ibn Hanbal and Ibn Taymiyya and their repudiation of the rationalist-contaminated methodologies of their opponents. From the abundance of works in this arena it is clear that Salafist writers find writing on ‘aqīda the most intellectually satisfying of their endeavors, since its undisputed starting point lends itself to their absolutism and intolerance for alternative points of view.

Sharī‘a - Islamic law as perceived to be contained in the divine guidance of the Qur’ān and Sunnah. 'Islamic law' is the nearest English translation of Sharī‘a, yet the latter is not confined specifically to legal subject matter and extends to the much wider areas of moral and religious guidance. However, Sharī‘a law is not "Islamic law", except as interpreted by Islamists, it is mostly a post-Qur’ānic, man-made medieval doctrine and though claiming to be derived from the Qur’ān, is thus a politicized interpretation of the Muslim scriptures and other non-revealed sources. The word Sharī‘a is mentioned only once in the Qur’ān, and not at all as a system of jurisprudence, but in its traditional meaning of the “right path” ثُمَّ جَعَلْنَاكَ عَلَى شَرِيعَةٍ مِّنَ الْأَمْرِ فَاتَّبِعْهَا “Then We have made you follow a course in the affair, therefore follow it,” (Al-Jāthiya, XLV,18)

Shirk - ‘Polytheism’. Literally, ‘associationism’, used in Islamic doctrine to denote polytheistic faiths and the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Among the Jihadis the term does not simply denote belief in several gods in the classic use of the work, but is extended to denote those that fail to maintain the exclusivity of God’s authority.

Sunna – ‘habit’ or ‘usual practice’, specifically the practice of Prophet Muhammad that he taught and practically instituted as a teacher of the Sharī‘a and the best paradigm for humanity, on the grounds of passages in the Qur’ān such as Obey God and His messenger [III,32] and Verily in the messenger of God you have a good example (XXXIII,21). It includes his specific words, habits, practices, and silent approvals and often stands as synonymous with hadith since most of the personality traits of Muhammad are known from these. Along with the Qur’ān itself and the sīra (‘biography’) literature it forms the basic source material for Islamic precedent and legal authority.

Tābi‘ī – (pl. Tābi‘ūn / īn) ‘Followers’, that is, the generation of Muslims who were born after the death of the Prophet Muhammad but who were nevertheless contemporaries of the Sahāba (‘Companions’) (q.v.).

Tāghūt – (pl. Tawāghīt) The ‘oppressor’. The term originally denoted a pre-Islamic idol, and thence by extension any object or individual that prevented mankind from doing good. In contemporary Jihadist discourse it is used to denote the ‘unjust ruler’ who is opposing God’s rule by ruling through a system other than that prescribed by God, and thus all heads of state of Muslim countries which are not governed by Sharī‘a law.

Takfīr – the process of calling a Muslim a kāfir (‘disbeliever’). The accusation of blasphemous disbelief, and effectively a formula of excommunication. The seriousness of the charge is summed up by the Hadīth: “If a man calls his Muslim brother kāfir, it applies to one of the two” (Bukhari), and has brought about an elaborate body of conditions to verify or mitigate it.

Tanzīh - The theological concept of deanthropomorphism, that God is ‘far exalted’ above depictions which parallel human characteristics.

Taqlīd - The imitation of conclusions and analyses of earlier Islamic authorities without an active examination of their reasoning.

Tashbīh - (‘assimilating’), anthropomorphism or comparing God to created things. See Ta‘tīl.

Ta‘tīl - (’negation’), a theological concept denying God all attributes (the opposite of tashbīh). By taking such Qur’ānic phrases as لَيْسَ كَمِثْلِهِ شَيْءٌ وَهُوَ السَّمِيعُ البَصِيرُ  Nothing is like unto Him; He hears all and sees all (ash-Shūrā, XLII,11), the Mu‘attila (‘Negators’) argued that what is meant is that He ‘knows’, because seeing and hearing in their real senses apply to creatures only. God is thus merely addressing mankind in the only language he can understand – the language of metaphor. Their opponents the Muthbita (‘Affirmers’) objected that by refusing to liken God to any physical existent one ends up denying His existence. Seeing and hearing are God’s real attributes, they insist, but since nothing is like unto Him, His attributes, though real, are not like the attributes of creatures. They have a different modality. God cannot be an abstract concept, He must therefore have some defining qualities, He must be in principle observable and exist in a ‘place’ (“above His throne in heaven”). To answer the problem of localizing an omnipresent creator the Muthbita held that although God’s person is confined to a particular 'region', His power, knowledge and other attributes are not to be considered so limited.

Tawhīd –lit. ‘Declaration of Oneness’. The term is a causative noun of the number ‘one’ (wāhid), and therefore refers to the ‘singularization’ or ‘exclusivization’ of something. Primarily it is a monotheist’s declaration of the single, uniqueness of God, as a single and absolute truth and a unique, independent and indivisible being, but it also extends to the implications of this singularity epistemologically, legally and politically – in that all knowledge must issue from God, that there is no law other than God’s law and that there can be no system of rule founded upon an authority other than that of God as the principal legislator, that is, a theocracy. Although the doctrine of tawhīd is fundamental to all Muslims, The Salafists (q.v.) make their strict adherence to the implications of tawhīd – as they contradict with contemporary epistemological, legal and political systems – their badge of legitimacy.

Usūl al-Fiqh - the science of the Legislative Principles, on the relationship between the sources of truth established on the one hand in usūl al-dīn, the Qur’an and the Sunna, and on the other hand fiqh, the science of how Muslims should behave. In other words, usūl al-fiqh tells Muslims how to develop their understanding of the divine law from revealed texts to facilitate the proper exercise of ijtihād. The usūl al-fiqh are four: Qur’ān, Sunna, Qiyās (analogy) and Ijmā‘ (consensus).

Al-Walā’ wal-Barā’ - ('loyalty and renunciation’) is a polarizing doctrine which divides humanity into ‘believers’ and ‘infidels,’ and seeks to establish that the only relationship between them can be one of hatred and enmity. The concept naturally derives from the understanding of Islam as a faith at war and is a doctrine by which Islamist radicals maintain their control over what constitutes the authenticity of a Muslim’s Islamic faith, gauged according to his expression of love for anything or anybody defined as Islam or Muslim, and his hatred for the infidel. The ‘true Muslim’ under this scheme does not assimilate into the enemy’s society or imitate its ways on even the most trivial level – such as imitating unbelievers in their physical appearance (“because imitating them in appearance points to liking them on the inside”), greeting unbelievers, sending them condolences at a time of grief, employing a non-Muslim or agreeing to be employed by a non-Muslim (“because it cedes authority and demeans the believer to the unbeliever”).

Zindīq - (pl. zanādiqa).Originally a term referring to Iranian dualists persisting after the Islamic conquests, the term was later used to denote those who oppose the revealed law, or who ‘personalise’ their religion by following allegorical readings of the holy text. Later the term denoted skeptics who applied a critical eye to revelation or tradition, hence: libertines or atheists.