Infidel
An infidel (literally "unfaithful") is a person who is accused of disbelief in the central tenets of one's own religion, such as members of another religion, or irreligious people.See:James Ginther (2009), The Westminster Handbook to Medieval Theology, Westminster,, Quote equal "Infidel literally means unfaithful"; - "Infidel", The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company. "An unbeliever with respect to a particular religion, especially Christianity or Islam"; - Infidel, Oxford Dictionaries, US (2011); Quote equal "A person who does not believe in religion or who adheres to a religion other than one’s own"
Infidel is an ecclesiastical term in Christianity around which the Church developed a body of theology that deals with the concept of infidelity, which makes a clear differentiation between those who were baptized and followed the teachings of the Church versus those who are outside the faith. Christians used the term infidel to describe those perceived as the enemies of Christianity.
After the ancient world, the concept of otherness, an exclusionary notion of the outside by societies with more or less coherent cultural boundaries, became associated with the development of the monotheistic and prophetic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (cf. pagan).
In modern literature, the term infidel includes in its scope atheists, polytheists,See:Ken Ward (2008), in Expressing Islam: Religious Life and Politics in Indonesia, Editors: Greg Fealy, Sally White,, Chapter 12;Alexander Ignatenko, Words and Deeds, Russia in Global Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 2, April–June 2009, page 145 animists, heathens, and pagans.See:Mignolo W. (2000), The many faces of cosmopolis: Border thinking and critical cosmopolitanism. Public Culture, 12(3), pp. 721–48
A willingness to identify other religious people as infidels corresponds to a preference for orthodoxy over pluralism.See:Cole and Hammond (1974), Religious pluralism, legal development, and societal complexity: rudimentary forms of civil religion, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 177–89; - Sullivan Kelvin. M. (1992), Religion and liberal democracy, The University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 59, No. 1, pp. 195–223.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infidel
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