“Unbelievers” and Equivalence

With regards to Islam, talk of “believers” and “unbelievers” is a bit misleading.  Part of the problem lies in the translation of the Arabic word “kufr” (from which we may derive the English word “cover”) as “disbelief.”

“Equivalency” Translation

Translation is a very difficult task, especially because an expression in one language may not have a simple parallel in another language.  When faced with this kind of situation, translators have to decide between a few options: Ruling out lengthy footnote explanations or adding whole paragraphs as though they belonged to the primary text, the remaining option is to choose an expression that’s similar enough that someone familiar with the concepts will be able to recognize the concept when they hear the new term (eg “Heavenly Immortals” as the Chinese translation for “Angels” and “Sage” for “Prophet”).  This is called searching for equivalence.  The idea is that an educated Chinese-speaking Muslim reader would be familiar enough with the context of the religion to avoid confusion between the concept of “Heavenly Immortals” in Taoism and the appropriation of the same term for Islamic texts.

One danger of this translation technique is that readers without a thorough education in the religious context (and even some well-intentioned scholars) may mistakenly believe that the Chinese Muslim author was confused about their religion or was attempting to add a Taoist concept into Islam.

Semantic relationships and connotation

The second danger is that the term a translator uses will likely have semantic relationships that do not match the semantic relationships of the term in the original language.  Semantic relationships are the connections one word or concept has with others.  For example, “big” relates to “small” in a strongly oppositional way.  ”Big” also relates in various ways to concepts like “huge,” “bigger,” “size,” “superior,” “tall,” “macroscopic” (‘think big’), “magnanimity” (‘that’s big of you’), and even “successful” or “powerful” (eg. “he made it big”, “the big cheese,” “a big shot”).  Some of these relationships are stronger and some are weaker. This affects the degree to which the word “big” has the power to bring other concepts to mind without those concepts needing to be explicitly stated, but these relationships all affect the connotation of the word “big” to some extent.

The key terms in Arabic iman and kufr are often translated as “belief” and “unbelief.”  These translations aren’t exactly wrong (they can function to indicate the corresponding concepts to readers familiar with the Islamic context), but they also aren’t quite right — readers without a firm familiarity with Islamic concepts might be misled by connotations that arise from the semantic relationships of “belief” and “unbelief” in the English language, which do not parallel the connotations of “iman” and “kufr” in Arabic.

“Iman” is relationally oppositional to “kufr” in the same way that “belief” is oppositional to “unbelief”, but the connotative meaning is very different.  Iman contains the meanings “safety,” “confidence,” “fortitude,” and “stability.”  Kufr indicates “covering,” “concealing,” “occluding,” “hiding,” and “denying (something known to be true).”

The people of 7th century Arabia didn’t necessarily disbelieve in God (“Allah” literally means “the God”).  The practice of idolatry had become common, yet in many cases the idol/deity/etc was considered to be merely an intermediary between a person and God, or else a separate entity besides God who also had power to affect worldly affairs.  The Arabic term “shirk” means “association” and refers to the belief that God would need help from an associate to administrate some function in the universe.  The monotheistic vision of Islam holds that God is omnipotent and omniscient, and has no trouble administrating everything in the universe from the very big to the very small.  Those people who practiced idolatry were called “mushrikeen,” literally, “those who associate (other beings with God).”  Even the kafirun (“people who do kufr“) and mushrikeen still usually claimed to believe in God.  As the Qur’an says, “If you ask them, ‘Who created the heavens and the earth, and put the sun and the moon in your service,’ they will say, ‘God.’ Why then did they deviate?” (29:61) and “If you ask them, ‘Who sends down from the sky water, to revive dead land,’ they will say, ‘God.’ Say, ‘Praise God.’ Most of them do not understand.” (29:63).  We can see from this that the difference between the mu’min (“one who has iman“) and the kafirun was not strictly what we would call “belief” in English.  There’s more to it.

Towards a better understanding of “believers” and “unbelievers” in Arabic

When the people in Arabia were given the message of Islam, it came as a series of (1:) statements about belief in unseen realities and (2:) ethical injunctions to change some of their behaviors.  The matters relating to belief were arguments for understanding the implications of monotheism (ie. if you believe that God is the omniscient and omnipotent creator and sustainer of all things, what are you doing praying to an idol? That’s just rude to the God who has done so much for you and deserves your gratitude).  The ethical injunctions reminded people that just because a practice has become commonplace does not mean that it is right (ie. female infanticide is murder and stealing the rightful inheritance of orphans is wrong). These kinds of ethical statements were not news, they were merely reminders (the Qur’an refers to itself as “the reminder”) of what people already knew in their hearts to be true.  The notion of kufr is this: when someone was told that what they were doing was wrong they knew this was true, but in the interest of worldly gain they denied what they heard, occluding and concealing the truth of it.  This covering-up is called kufr. As is generally the case when involved in a cover-up of unethical actions, the person (one would hope) feels unstable and troubled by their conscience. On the other hand, when someone is given an ethical reminder and takes it as a reinforcement of what they already know in their heart to be true, it provides them with a sense of stability and fortitude in the ethical correctness of their actions; this is called iman.

The wrap-up

“Iman” could be translated as “the fortification of belief in justice and the ethical behavior it leads to,” and “kufr” could be understood as “concealing truth and willful ignorance of justice out of desire for unethical action.”  To have iman (often translated as “faith” or “belief”) and be a mu’min (“a believer”) means that your decision to behave ethically is (or would be) fortified by the message of judgement in the hereafter.  To do kufr and be a kafir (“an unbeliever”) means that someone chooses to deny their belief in justice (what C.S. Lewis called ‘willful blindness’) out of desire to continue in behavior they know to be unethical even after they have been reminded that such behavior is unethical. As this explanation should make clear, a person does not have to identify themselves as “Muslim,” or even “religious” for iman to be present in their heart, and they might be called “a believer” as the term is used in the Islamic tradition.

To translate these terms simply as “belief” and “unbelief” comes from a need for terms that provide functional equivalence, but for it to be functional, one must first know the full meaning of the Arabic expression so that these words can properly function as stand-ins.

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Copyright © 2011 Brendan Newlon

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