Religion A Matter of Divinity, not Sociology

Religion A Matter of Divinity, not Sociology

1987 5 May 17 Religion A Matter of Divinity, not Sociology (383) Because of the political framework within which most of our news comes to us today, we tend to bracket nuclear energy with the manufacture and deployment of lethal weaponry whose capacity for destruction fills us with horror. We cannot do else but oppose what we have come to regard as a baneful social phenomenon peculiar to the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. But are we right in thinking of this only as a social phenomenon which has become the supreme political tool of the major power blocks? We could, equally, regard nuclear energy as a natural phenomenon – one that can be harnessed for the good of mankind – and, thinking of it as a neutral force in life, could assess its merits per se. Then regardless of the uses found for it by warring nations, we should have no qualms about supporting it.

In actual fact, there are very few people who make the mistake of thinking of nuclear energy as a social rather than a natural phenomenon. But there are many who make a very similar mistake in the study of religion. Religion is essentially divine truth. But, thanks to the historians’ and anthropologists’ persistence in portraying it as a social phenomenon, misconceptions about what religion actually is have taken root in people’s minds. The disciplines of sociological studies likewise have done much to prevent the student of religion from being able to distinguish between theory and practice. Hence the widespread and erroneous belief that the conduct of Muslim nations is synonymous with Islamic doctrines. It is the old mistake of confusing behaviour with standards of behaviour. It is this way of approaching the subject which has led in recent years to the writing of books such as The Dagger of Islam and Militant Islam. Their authors, presuming that Muslims are habitually “at daggers drawn” and militant in their demands, concluded that these negative attitudes were features of Islam.

But Islam must be looked at in a different perspective, as a truth revealed by God and preserved in the texts of the Quran and Hadith, and not as a social phenomenon. Once grasped as an ideology, it cannot then be confused with the sum of human behavioural aberrations. If one truly wishes to understand Islam, one must ultimately think of it as a divine belief.