Kafir (Arabic: kafir; plural kuffar) is an Arabic word meaning an unbeliever, a person who hides, denies, or covers the truth. In cultural terms, it is a derogatory term used to describe an unbeliever, non-Muslims, a Muslim of a differing sect, or an apostate from Islam. It is usually translated into English as "infidel" or "unbeliever".
Use outside Islam
By the 15th century, the word kafir/kuffar was used by Muslims in Africa to refer to the non-Muslim African natives. Many of those kuffar, were enslaved and sold by their Muslim captors to European and Asian merchants, mainly from Portugal, who by that time had established trading outposts along the coast of West Africa. These European slave traders adopted that Arabic word to refer to their captives, and eventually changed it into many forms - cafre (in Portuguese and Spanish), caffar, kaffer, kaffir, kafir, etc. (in English, Dutch, and Afrikaans); see South Africa Kaffir people. Those words were then used to name many things related to Africa, such as the Kaffir Wars, Kaffraria, kaffir lime, kaffir corn, and so on; see kaffir (disambiguation).
It is now illegal to use the term "kaffir" in South Africa.
Some of those African slaves were taken by the Portuguese to work in their colonies in Asia. In some cities of Sri Lanka, in particular, the descendants of those slaves still constitute a distinctive ethnic group, who call themselves Kaffir.
In South Africa the word kaffir eventually became a racial slur, applied pejoratively or offensively by some whites to African blacks or to dark-skinned persons in general. In Jamaica it is applied by some Jamaicans of Indian ancestry to Jamaicans of African ancestry. See kaffir (ethnic slur).
