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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Mike18xx (talk | contribs) at 21:10, 29 January 2006 (Now that you've STIPULATED that the word survives in English (despite it NOT being used by Christians to describe non-Christians for centuries), RVing your obfuscating jackassery becomes even easier.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

An "infidel" is an unbeliever concerning central tenets of a religion, often used in a pejorative sense to describe those who explicitly deny them (especially regarding asserted aspects of the religion's deity). More generally, an infidel is one who doubts or rejects a particular (usually heirarchical) doctrine, system, or principle.

• In Christianity, "infidel" is an archaism now supplanted variously by "atheist", "agnostic", "heathen" or "pagan"; the word survives in English as a general term, and as a common translation of the Islamic "kafir".
• In Islam, an Arabic term romanized as "kafir" is used for non-Muslims.

Other terms arising from the same concept, but seldom rendered to "infidel" in English:

• In Hinduism, "nastik" describes one who does not recognize the authority of the Vedas, and "mleccha", someone who does not follow the Hindu way of living.
• In Judaism, "Goyim" and "Gentile" denote non-Jews and non-Israelites, respectively.

(See Infidel (computer game) for the 1983 computer text adventure from Infocom.)

• Disambiguation pages