On Islam and the definition of “religion”
I noticed a discussion in the comments today about whether Islam is a religion, so I thought I’d feature a link to this previous post of mine on the subject of the definition of “religion.”
That post – which I suggest you read – focuses on the legal definition, and obviously people often use the word in more than the legal sense. But I think that Islam is a religion by any definition that comes to mind, at least for me.
Of course, not all religions promote good things (that’s covered somewhat in the previous post, as well, with examples such as suttee and female genital mutilation). But that’s a separate issue, although an important one.
Commenter “Cicero” writes:
Islam is an ideology, not a religion. It has found the soft underbelly of the post-Enlightenment West. An example is CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a clearly political entity, as its name clearly indicates, which is a non-profit because it is ”religious”.
Those are two separate issues as well, in my opinion. The first – that Islam is not a religion but rather an ideology – is incorrect, in my opinion, because Islam has all the trappings of a religion in the legal and in the vernacular sense. However – as with most religions – a lot of other things come along with Islam in terms of its actual beliefs and practices. It’s not that Islam isn’t a religion. It’s that it is a suprasecessionist religion that wants to dominate the entire world and that it also is deeply intertwined with political goals. For example:
Political aspects of the religion of Islam are derived from its religious scripture … as well as elements of political movements and tendencies followed by Muslims or Islamic states throughout its history. Shortly after its founding, Islam’s prophet Muhammad became a ruler of a state, and the intertwining of religion and state in Islam (and the idea that “politics is central” to Islam), is in contrast to the doctrine of rendering “unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God”, of Christianity, its related and neighboring religion.
Of course, many countries do have Christianity as an official religion (such as, for example, the Church of England), but they also have freedom of religious belief. In the US, the separation of church and state goes further in that no state religion can be established. That’s why the US Constitution and Islam proper are in inherent conflict. Although there are plenty of not-so-religions individual Moslems who aren’t interested in Islam taking over the world or the US government, the traditional beliefs of devout Moslems would include such a goal of takeover. In that sense Islam is both a religion and a political ideology.
Religion essentially specifies a behavioral protocol or model.
Islam is a religion; Islamism is a global political movement, both supremicist and totalitarian.
https://isi.org/leo-strauss-and-the-recovery-of-the-theologico-political-problem/
People are born, live, marry, have children, seek moral and spiritual guidance, and die within the auspices of Islam.
I’m not crazy about Islam. It certainly is an ideology as well.
But yes, it is a religion.
There was no founder of Islam – see the youtube Pfanderfilms channel (or any other outlet with Jay Smith). It is a cobbled together collection of instructions for thuggery, hardly a religion – unless you care to categorize it as another version of Satanism due to its desire to kill. And Satanism should not be recognized as a religion worthy of any protection, just like Islam.
Islam is a cult, much like the Latter-Day Saints or Scientology.
Just about every religion has the following contours:
1. A sacred text.
2. A divine being (or “god”) that adherents pray to.
3. Concepts of what is considered moral and what is considered a sin.
4. Rituals that adherents observe if they want to be considered in good standing.
5. Clergy who provide spiritual guidance to their flock.
To that you can add an end of the world prophecy and/or dietary restrictions. Those are not universal across the board however.
Where I am going with this:
1. Earth in the Balance
2. Gaia
3. Driving a battery powered car vs. a gasoline powered car,
4. Climate protests.
5. Greta Thunberg.
The last two: climate change and vegetarianism or veganism.
Next: Feminism.
The vast majority of religions in the world have not had a sacred text. Even if you eliminate all the illiterate ones, Greco-Roman paganism did not, or Shinto. You get various things written down, but no one appeals to them to settle disputes.
Its more a totalized social system why did it appeal not only to north africa and the levant but increasingly even western europe and america it seems to be something in the cultural vaccuum in socialist regimes as well as the West
I personally do not believe that Islam is a religion but rather that it is a violently expansionist, totalitarian ideology that wraps itself within a facade of religious pretense. Yet whether ideology and/or religion… it is evil. Only the willfully blind can believe otherwise.
Looks like Europe had its work cut out for it….
“The War at Home That Europe Cannot Dodge;
“Just as our rulers don’t know if a woman can have a penis, they don’t know which side to take in a war between civilisation and barbarism.”—
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/the-war-at-home-that-europe-cannot-dodge/
Chilling.
@ Alan Colbo > “Islam is a cult, much like the Latter-Day Saints or Scientology.”
One of those things is not like the others.
Islam is a religion. Islam is challenging. The Eurotrash political class (and their faculty counterparts in North America) keep failing in response to the challenges. Because they’re not worth much and have no loyalty to the vernacular population in their own societies.
‘…of Christianity, its related and neighboring religion.’
From the same general neighborhood, sorta, but most definitely NOT related!
And I’m not really convinced about the ‘neighborhood’ part, either.
Not a religion. A misogynist imperialist political and military ideology with a religion attached to brainwash the uneducated and fool outsiders.
If you listen to its proponents, Islam is a way of ordering society.
The religious part is only there to help classify who is in charge and who are the second/third/fourth class citizens.
Mick is woefully naive of course they will dodge it with great alacrity as dhimmis learned to do
Lets not deny it is a religion when you have a billion adherents well that dog wont hunt
People gravate to the strong horse perhaps this pontiff will rise to the challenge he did serve in Algeria briefly but im skeptical you know how they handled ratzinger
Totally believable
https://x.com/John_Hudson/status/1940741691834560805
Like the sugar pit from yesterday
This link will teach you everything you need to know about islam. It’s not a quick read, but neither is it a difficult read. islam is the single greatest threat to Western Civilization. Like it or not it is a fight to the death.
https://answering-islam.org/Authors/JR/Future/index.htm
JWM
Here are two dictionary definitions of religion:
===========================================
From “The American Heritage Dictionary”
re·li·gion n.
1.
a. The belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers, regarded as creating and governing the universe: respect for religion.
b. A particular variety of such belief, especially when organized into a system of doctrine and practice: the world’s many religions.
c. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
2. The life or condition of a person in a religious order: a widow who went into religion and became a nun.
3. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion: a person for whom art became a religion.
https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=religion
===========================================
From “The Merriam-Webster Dictionary”
religion noun
1: a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
2a(1): the service and worship of God or the supernatural
2a(2): commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
2b: the state of a religious
3: a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith
4 archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion
===========================================
Those definitions are pretty broad. However, they include ways in which people use the word, religion, as opposed to systematic classification.
I’ve found that the Encyclopedia Britannica can sometimes get to the core:
_____________________________
religion, human beings’ relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or worthy of especial reverence….
https://www.britannica.com/topic/religion
_____________________________
Not bad, but still broad. Certainly Islam passes this test.
To some extent asking “whether X is a religion” is more a matter of the credibility respondents wish to accord X.
of course its a religion, but it is something more, we see how it manifests itself in places like Gaza or the Taliban emirate, to cite two examples, even in mostly secular countries like Algeria, it sowed a brutal civil war that went on for a decade,
as for the legal system in those countries, ask the brave writer Boulem Sansal, who is in jail for a statement that might not be polemical but is, (regarding Morocco) Turkey for three generations, had a reasonably solid civil society even under the Military Dictatorship,
the general principle was what made the Arab and PAshtun expert Enoch Powell, from his military service, weary about the mass migration that was happening from thpse countries in the 60s on,
As I said earlier:
I’m not crazy about Islam. It certainly is an ideology as well.
Why “religion”?
Because Rome [it’s a Latin word, no]? Because Constantine adopted Christianity, so Christianity becomes the Romans’ (new) religion? So then Christianity appears as a “religion” to itself, and the Roman Christians are content to speak of their religion, and then to speak of others’ pieties as the same as theirs — as “religion”?
What was proper “religion” before Christianity to the Romans? Was the god of the Hebrews and jewish piety “religion” to the Romans, even though these Hebrew ways were certainly not Roman ways? Or were the Romans content to insist that no, the Jews should act upon the Romans’ view of proper piety and abandon all their sacred Jewish rigamarol as empty rigamarol unfit to the honor of the gods, that is, the Roman gods?
What do the Hebrews say of themselves and their pieties: what call they them? They have, I think, terms of their own for their righteous practices given them by “revelations” (as we say to sum the interactions of their almighty with his creations).
And so on with each. A fair amount of disentangling is on order, I think.
And this leaves aside the surprising vagaries inherent in the blithe term “ideology”.
You know, the neologism born in the late 18th century, promoted by Destutt de Tracy and Thomas Jefferson his English translator! Doing headflips through the 19th and 20th centuries like some manic acrobat with nary a clue where he’s going? That term!?
no it was a contrary faith to the Roman pantheon, as it had been to the Persians and the Egyptians, some Pharoahs were more lenient on the point,
that classic trek episode, suggested a modernized Rome would act against the Children of the Son, the one with Commodore Merrick, in much of the Third World, the mere profession of faith, is a grave offense,
sdferr:
A group can consider another group’s belief system a religion and yet still want to convert them, forcibly or otherwise.
as I noted before, there are certain resonances between Islam and the very Orthodox faith, with respect to customs I guess there is a certain flattery there, except for the facts that the Koran retcons the source, take any Old Testament account, of events,
I assume the Hadiths do similar work,
https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3364
there is a certain slight of hand involved,
One might make the point, that there was a certain coordination between faith and official culture in this country, say the Sunday laws, that
enforced the Sabbath
rules,
Yet my point was to give us each pause to ask wherefrom we get our own peculiar attachment to these idiosyncratic terms of ours, terms like “religion”, like “ideology”; terms we use and yet don’t always know so well, central though they may be (all the more reason to pause to reflect now and again!); terms which aren’t the terms of those to whom we attribute them — attribute for ourselves (our purposes) in our own flailing discourses, undsoweiter.
Heh!
There goes another one! “. . . and official culture in this country”. These critters zoom by with astounding frequency.
you make it hard to agree, the customs and practices, that are common in civil society, that have been less so in the last two generations because pluralism so we have become so ‘open minded’ we welcomed the Old Gods in new vessels, and disdained the true Gods,
the faiths that formed the foundation of this country,
certainly since Engel v Vitale, as a marker,