Defining Kafir, Mushrik And A Non-Muslim
Here “KNOWINGLY” or “DELIBERATELY” also encompasses the person’s knowledge and circumstances, and what was the attitude of person committing Shirk when faced with counter arguments for polytheism, did he ignore them and didn’t pay heed to them or did he took those arguments seriously, and whether there was any prejudice involved in making his decision of consciously adopting polytheism as religion et. etc.. All these factors need to be accounted for, before we can declare anyone Mushrik. The statement “ A person will be considered as mushrik only When he beliefs that there is only one god and knows that God should not be shared with anyone while worshiping but still he does it KNOWINGLY ” is not always true, as there may be cases where a person adopts polytheism, let’s say, based on some prejudice or he didn’t pay attention to the counter arguments, didn’t even take them seriously; these factors can also become a matter of accountability and can put him in the category of Mushrik.