Embrace Your Inner Kafir

Back on March 26, 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth published a photo of himself on X in which his tattooed right biceps was prominently featured. Two tattoos especially stood out, one in Latin (Deus vult) and the other in Arabic (كافر – transliterated as kafir). For three quarters of the world’s population, these phrases wouldn’t cause any stir, but many from the world of Islam got their knickers in a twist, and made sure the rest of us knew how offended they were.

The term Deus vult means literally “God wills [it]”. Its offensiveness, in Muslim eyes, stems from its reputedly use as the war cry of the “Christian warriors” during the First Crusade (1096-99), when the Roman Church sought to win back the Holy Land from its conquest three hundred years earlier by the armies of Islam. Biblically, its origin goes back to the Latin Vulgate translation of 2 Samuel 14.14 — nec vult Deus perire animam (“God is not willing that any soul should perish”). Here, God’s will is associated with His desire that human beings find their well-being in Him and His ways. The Christian claim that the gospel is God’s revelation to the world is not well-received by the Muslim world, which asserts that its message surpasses all others. “God wills the gospel to triumph over Islam,” Pope Urban II essentially said.

This naturally troubles many Muslims, who find is offensive. But, it is the message of the Bible – God sent His Son into the world to bring sinners from all walks of life in all time and places to salvation through the cross. God wills the advancement of the gospel to every human ear.

But the sword of offense cuts both ways. In the Arabic language there is a common phrase transliterated as masha’allah, which translates roughly as “what God wills.” It is typically used as an expression of wonder, joy or praise, sort of like “Look at what God has done!” Among the superstitious, it is repeated as a way of warding off the evil eye of others, hinting that my good fortune (the birth of a beautiful baby, the gift of a expensive present, etc.,) is not my doing but rather the work of God – you can’t be jealous or wish me ill because of what Allah has done).

And there is another phrase found habitually in Muslim vocabulary that even Muhammad used as a war cry when his armies attacked non-Muslim communities: Allahu akbar! This phrase does not mean “God is great,” as it is often mistranslated, but rather “God is greater” (akbar is the comparative form of kabir). As a result, this cry is a challenge to the non-Muslim world: our Allah is greater than whatever force you can muster against him/us. He will be victorious, and you and all unbelievers will finally fall before our authority or before our swords. If you think a bit about this, you discover that the Allahu akbar shout is in fact little different from Deus vult, except for the fact that they are invoking two different Gods.

The Muslim who is offended by Hegseth’s Deus vult tattoo, to avoid hypocrisy, must also register his offense at Allahu akbar. Yet in my almost seven decades of life I have never come across such a Muslim, and doubt I ever will.

Even more offensive for some Muslims is the fact that Hegseth, a vocal disbeliever in the religion of Islam, has tattooed himself with the Arabic word “kafir”, found over 150 times in the Qur’an. They find it to be a personal insult, implying that Hegseth is openly mocking their beliefs.

Nerdeen Kiswani, a Palestinian Muslim activist, posted on X: “Hegseth just got a kafir (كافر) tattoo under his Deus Vult tattoo—a Crusader slogan. This isn’t just a personal choice; it’s a clear symbol of Islamophobia from the man overseeing U.S. wars. “Kafir” has been weaponized by far-right Islamophobes to mock and vilify Muslims.”

Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR, an organization founded by the Muslim Brotherhood and listed by the US government as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation anti-terrorism trial of 1995-2008), commented to Newsweek: “Tattooing the Arabic word kafir – which refers to someone who knowingly denies or conceals fundamental divine truths – on his body is a display of both anti-Muslim hostility and personal insecurity.”

Well, let’s back up for a minute. The Arabic noun kafir comes from the verb kafara, which primarily means “to cover or conceal.” When referring to people and their beliefs, it points particularly to those who hide from themselves and others the truths that God has revealed. In the context of the Qur’an, it is a negative term for those who have not become Muslims, either because they have not yet heard the message of Muhammad, or those who have heard and rejected Islam. For the former kuffar (plural of kafir), they still have an opportunity to convert once the invitation to Islam comes to them. For the latter, Islam has declared war against them and they are to be subdued or exterminated.

The term is often translated as “unbeliever or infidel” for the ignorant kafir, and as “disbeliever or rejecter” for the kafir who intentionally ignores or rejects the message of Islam.

But on the streets of the Muslim world, kafir bears a heavy load of freight beyond the denotations of the Qur’an. The word divides the in-crowd (the Muslim world) from the out-crowd. It has disparaging, pejorative and derogatory implications, which all find their roots in the Qur’an because Allah declares there that the kuffar are the vilest of creatures/animals (98.6; 8.22, 55), the deaf and dumb (6.39), the losers (7.1788), evil-doers (16.25), liars (16.39), dumb as cattle (25.44), forgers of lies against Allah (61.7) and the deviators (72.15). Those who die as disbelievers/rejecters will receive the fires of hell, the most painful punishments for eternity that Allah can devise. They will rue their disbelief in Allah and Muhammad, but it will be too late to undo their fate. Allah will have the last laugh.

Read the rest at Mateen Elass’ blog.