"[T]he term kāfir cannot be simply equated, as many Muslim theologians of post-classical times and practically all Western translators of the Qur’ān have done, with “unbeliever” or “infidel” in the specific, restricted sense of one who rejects the system of doctrine and law promulgated in the Qur’ān and amplified by the teachings of the Prophet — but must have a wider, more general meaning. This meaning is easily grasped when we bear in mind that the root verb of the participial noun kāfir (and of the infinitive noun kufr) is kafara, “he [or “it”] covered [a thing]”: thus, in 57:20 the tiller of the soil is called (without any pejorative implication) kāfir, “one who covers,” i.e., the sown seed with earth, just as the night is spoken of as having “covered” (kafara) the earth with darkness. In their abstract sense, both the verb and the nouns derived from it have a connotation of “concealing” something that exists or “denying” something that is true. Hence, in the usage of the Qur’ān — with the exception of the one instance (in 57:20) where this participial noun signifies a “tiller of the soil” - a kāfir is “one who denies [or “refuses to acknowledge”] the truth” in the widest, spiritual sense of this latter term: that is, irrespective of whether it relates to a cognition of the supreme truth — namely, the existence of God - or to a doctrine or ordinance enunciated in the divine writ, or to a self-evident moral proposition, or to an acknowledgment of, and therefore gratitude for, favours received."