“Believer” and “Unbeliever”: What the Words of the Qur’an Really Say

Two words come up again and again whenever people talk about the Qur’an: faith (îmân) and unbelief (kufr). The translations are so well established that no one questions them anymore: on one side those who believe, on the other those who do not — two opinions, two camps. Yet this is not how the Qur’an uses these words. We need only read it to see this, and that is what we are going to do: every occurrence, with no later dictionary, letting the text define itself.

1. A word that means “to bury”

Let us begin with the most surprising point. The word kufr comes from a root, K-F-R, whose primary meaning is to cover, to bury. The Qur’an uses it in this concrete sense, with no religious overtone at all, when it compares the life of this world to “a rain whose vegetation delights the cultivators” (57:20) — in Arabic al-kuffâr, literally “those who bury” the seed in the earth. The very same word as “the unbelievers”.

It also uses it in a positive sense, fifteen times: God “covers their evil deeds” — yukaffir ʿanhum sayyiʾâtihim. To erase a fault is to cover it over. And kaffâra, expiation, is what covers a failing.

A kâfir, in the primary sense, is therefore someone who covers something that is there. It remains to be seen what.

2. Covering a blessing: ingratitude

The first object of kufr, in the Qur’an, is a blessing received. The word is then the exact opposite of shukr, gratitude — and the text sets the two against each other seven times:

“Remember Me, and I will remember you; be grateful to Me, and do not be ungrateful (lâ takfurûn).” (2:152)

This verse is addressed to believers. A believer can therefore “commit kufr” — not by changing religion, but by covering over a blessing. Solomon, before the throne of the Queen of Sheba, brought to him in the blink of an eye, says: “This is a grace from my Lord, to test me: will I be grateful or ungrateful (a-ashkuru am akfuru)?” (27:40). And the text sums up the human being in two words: “grateful, or ungrateful (kafûr)” (76:3).

Most telling of all, perhaps, is Pharaoh. When Moses comes back to him, Pharaoh reminds him that he brought him up, then reproaches him for killing the Egyptian: “You did the deed you did, and you are an ingrate (mina l-kâfirîn)” (26:19). Pharaoh is not reproaching Moses for a belief: he is reproaching him for repaying his kindness so poorly.

3. Covering what one knows: denial

The second object of kufr is a truth that has been recognized. And it is here that the word parts most clearly from “not believing”. Twenty-five verses link kufr to knowing, to recognizing, to having received:

“When there came to them what they knew, they denied it (kafarû bihi).” (2:89)

“Why do you deny the signs of God, when you are witnesses to them?” (3:70)

“They recognize the blessing of God, then they deny it.” (16:83)

“They denied them, though their souls were certain of them.” (27:14)

The kâfir is not the one who does not know: he is the one who has seen, and who covers over. The text says so indirectly, through a rule it lays down for itself: “We do not punish anyone until We have sent a messenger” (17:15). Before anything has been presented, there is nothing to deny — and therefore no kufr.

Grammar shows it too. In the Qur’an, no one ever “disbelieves” in the absolute: one denies something — kafara bi-: the signs of God, what has been sent down, a blessing, God Himself. The verb demands an object. Kufr is an act toward what one has received, not a state of mind.

4. Rejecting: the same word, for good

Since the word names an act and not an opinion, it can work in the other direction. And the Qur’an commands it:

“No compulsion in religion: the right way stands apart from error. Whoever denies (yakfur bi-) the false gods and believes in God has grasped the firmest handhold.” (2:256)

The same verb, kafara, for the believer who rejects the idol and for the idolater who rejects the message. Abraham says to his people: “we disown you (kafarnâ bikum)” (60:4). Satan, on the Day of Judgment, will say to those who followed him: “I disown (kafartu) your having associated me” (14:22). The word is neither good nor bad in itself: it is the object that gives it its value. Disowning the idol is a good thing; disowning a blessing or a recognized truth is the kufr that the Qur’an condemns.

5. The other word: security

Now to îmân, “faith”. Its root, ʾ-M-N, is that of security and trust, and the Qur’an uses it in this sense on every page. Mecca is “the secure city” (al-balad al-amîn, 95:3). There God fed the Quraysh “against hunger and made them secure against fear” (âmanahum min khawf, 106:4). The enemy who asks for asylum is escorted back “to his place of safety” (maʾman, 9:6). The prophets present themselves as “a trustworthy messenger” (rasûl amîn); Gabriel is “the faithful Spirit”; Moses, “the strong, the reliable” (28:26). A deposit placed in someone’s keeping is called amâna: “let the one who has been entrusted with a deposit return it” (2:283); “do not betray God and the Messenger, do not betray what has been entrusted to you” (8:27). And God Himself bears the name al-Muʾmin (59:23) — “the one who gives security” — exactly the word that is translated as “the believer”.

Let us pause on 106:4, because everything is there. “He made them secure against fear” — âmanahum — is the same verb, in the same form, as “they believed” — âmanû. When this verb takes a person as its object, it means to make that person secure; when it is followed by bi- (“in”), it means to place one’s trust in; when it is followed by li- and a person, it means to believe someone, to take them at their word: “Lot believed him” (âmana lahu, 29:26). To believe, in the Qur’an, is to grant one’s trust — and to receive security in return. One verse holds both ends together:

“Those who have trusted and have not mixed their faith with injustice, for them there is security.” (6:82)

This is why faith, in the Qur’an, is a matter of a heart set at rest — “his heart tranquil in faith” (16:106) — and why it is distinct from islâm, a word from the root of peace (S-L-M), which names the act of embracing peace, of yielding oneself to it: “The Bedouins say: ‘we have believed’. Say: you have not believed; say rather: ‘we have embraced peace’ (aslamnâ), for faith has not yet entered your hearts” (49:14). One can have yielded oneself to peace without yet having given one’s trust.

6. One can “believe” in falsehood

A final proof that these words name an act and not a truth: the Qur’an speaks of people who “believe (yuʾminûna bi-) in idols and false gods” (4:51), of people who “have believed in falsehood” (29:52). Faith, too, can have a bad object. Exactly as kufr can have a good one.

The pair is therefore perfectly symmetrical: to trust / to disown. Neither “believing” nor “disbelieving” contains truth or falsehood in itself; they say what one does with what one has received.

7. What this changes

Let us sum up what the text says about itself.

The pair îmân / kufr does not set two opinions against each other, but two attitudes toward what is received: trust and denial, faithfulness and ingratitude, recognizing and covering over. These are acts — verbs with an object — not labels.

Three consequences, which the usual reading makes disappear:

  • A Muslim can commit kufr — covering over a blessing (2:152), disowning what he has recognized. The text uses the word for believers.
  • Someone to whom nothing has been presented is not called kâfir by the Qur’an (17:15). The word presupposes a reception, then a refusal.
  • When the Qur’an names an opponent “those who have denied”, it names him by what he has done. At the very threshold of the permission to fight, the opponent is described in two words that are two acts: “traitor and ingrate” (khawwân kafûr, 22:38) — set against “those who have trusted”.

In later usage — that of law, then of everyday language — kâfir became a status: “non-Muslim”, something one is, regardless of what one has done or received. This is a shift, and one must be aware of it to read the text: the Qur’an speaks of what one does with a blessing, a sign, a pledged word; later usage speaks of what one is. The two do not cover the same ground — and it is precisely on this shift that the idea of fighting someone for what they are would later come to rest.

Key takeaway. Kufr: covering over what one has received — a blessing (ingratitude), a recognized truth (denial), an idol (and then it is a good thing). Îmân: granting one’s trust, being faithful, and receiving security. Two acts, not two camps. The same verb says “they believed” and “He made them secure against fear”.

Further reading