خلاصة:
A number of far-right politicians and conservatives in the United
States continue to argue that the First Amendment’s freedom of belief
does not apply to Islam because it is not a religion in the western
sense of the term, but a way of life that includes politics. By providing
definitions from both western sociologists of religion and
conservative political lobbyists and think tanks, I show that most
experts on religion in the United States define religion as a way of
life that governs behavior in the public sphere. I also argue that these
definitions match similar definitions, offered by Muslim scholars
in the Middle East and South Asia for the last fifty years, of the Arabic
word dīn, typically translated as “religion.” By tracing the origins
of the idea that dīn signifies something other than religion
because of its relation to regulating public behavior, I show that earlier
mid-twentieth century Muslim critiques of equating dīn and religion
had little to do with any intrinsic nature if Islam itself and far
more to do with western scholarship of that period’s understanding
of secularity, conceptualization of the state, and prediction of the
inevitable demise of religious belief and practice.
ملخص الجهاز:
” By tracing the ori gins of the idea that dīn signifies something other than religion because of itsrelation to regulating public behavior, Ishow that ear lier mid-twentieth century Muslim critiques of equating dīn and re ligion had little to do with any intrinsic nature if Islam itself and far more to do with western scholarship of that period’s understanding of secularity, conceptualization of the state, and prediction of the inevitable demise of religious belief and practice.
” By tracing the origins of the idea that dīn signifies something other than religion because of its relation to regulating public behavior, I will show that earlier mid-twentieth century Muslim cri tiques of equating dīn and religion had little to do with the nature of Islam itself and far more to do with western scholarship of that period’s understand ing of secularity, conceptualization of the state, and prediction of the inevitable demise of religious belief and practice.
32 After an introductory section on the history of religions, in which he dis cussed ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Christian and Islamic eras, and finally post-Enlightenment Europe, Draz divides his book Al-Dīn into four parts: (1) “On Determining the Meaning of Dīn,” which is most relevant to the present discussion; (2) the relationship between dīn and aspects of culture and civiliza tion (al-thaqāfah wa al-tahdhīb), such as ethics and moral behavior (al-akhlāq), philosophy, and other fields of knowledge, (3) humanity’s natural inclination toward religion and its role in society, and (4) the origins of religious belief ac cording to numerous schools of thought.