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\u2018Religion\u2019 is a belief in, or the worship of, a god or gods. The\u00a0Oxford Dictionary & Thesaurus<\/em>\u00a0defines it as the belief in a superhuman controlling power, especially in a personal God or gods entitled to obedience and worship. It may also refer to anything to which one is totally devoted and which rules one\u2019s life.<\/span><\/p>\n \n For the first definition, it basically refers to those religions like Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism as well as animistic beliefs of pagans. Under the second, it may include beliefs in certain philosophies, value systems, thought, ideology or ism with no supernatural power like atheism, scientism, fascism, secularism, human-rightism, even extreme passion, say, in football or mountaineering! As these may be regarded as false or pseudo-religions, this writing will focus on religion in the first meaning of the word.<\/span><\/p>\n \n \u2018Religionism\u2019, next, must not be understood in the extreme sense of excessive religious zeal. It is here applied as a generic term merely to refer to attribution one may associate oneself to any particular religion, or one\u2019s desire to govern one\u2019s life according to the teachings of that religion.<\/span><\/p>\n \n What is \u2018secular\u2019 and its relation with \u2018secularization\u2019 and \u2018secularism\u2019? \u2018Secular\u2019 concerns with the civil affairs of this world, matters that only relate to this world, not heavenly, spiritual or sacred. It does not concern with religion or religious belief and not bound by any religious rule.<\/span><\/p>\n \n \u2018Secularization\u2019 refers to the process of making something secular. A Dutch theologian, Cornelis van Peursen, defines it as the liberation of man \u201cfirst from religious and then from metaphysical control over his reason and his language\u201d. It is by means of reason and language that one develops and reflects one\u2019s views of things. The combination of these perceptions constitutes one\u2019s world view.<\/span><\/p>\n One is secularizing oneself if one takes away the roles or influence of religions and metaphysics from his thought and words, and consequently actions.<\/span><\/p>\n \n According to Harvey Cox, a Harvard theologian, secularization is \u201cthe loosing of the world from religious and quasi-religious understanding of itself\u2026\u201d It is man turning his attention away from life beyond this world, and give attention to only this worldly life and only to this lifetime.<\/span><\/p>\n \n Cox adds that the secularization process is a \u201cliberating development\u201d whereby the end product is relativism, i.e. everything changes according to times and locations, including man or society\u2019s value system and standards.<\/span><\/p>\n \n Cox writes further that the integral components of secularization are three: (i) the disenchantment of nature, (ii) the desacralization of politics and, (iii) the deconsecration of values. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas explains them as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n \n The first means the freeing of nature from its religious implications. It involves the dispelling of godly, animistic spirits and magic from the natural world. This separates the world from God, and distinguishes man from it. As a result, man may no longer view nature as a divine entity. This idea will allow and \u2018empower\u2019 him to act freely upon nature as he wishes, to exploit it according to his needs and plans.<\/span><\/p>\n \n The second means the abolition of sacral legitimation of political power and authority. There is no such concept, for example, as \u2018the vicegerent of God\u2019 on earth or any form of supernatural representation of one\u2019s worldly power. There is no such thing as ruling or controlling people on behalf of any religious institutions. This notion is the prerequisite of political and social changes, again as man deems them fit and necessary.<\/span><\/p>\n \n The third means the rendering transient and relative all and every value system which includes religion and world views having ultimate and definitive significance for one\u2019s life. In this way, man\u2019s future is open to change and evolution. Meaning, man is free to create the change and immerse himself in the so-called \u2018evolutionary\u2019 process, moving from the state of \u2018infantility\u2019 to \u2018maturity\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n The above attitude necessitates that man must aware of the relativity of his own views and beliefs. Today he may believe in something, and tomorrow he may change it. In other words, as Attas puts it, \u201che must live with the realization that the rules and ethical codes of conduct which guide his own life will change with the times and generations\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n \n Last but not least, \u2018secularism\u2019 is the view that human values and standards should not be influenced or controlled by religion. It concerns only with the human affairs of this world without any element of spiritual or sacred intervention. \u2018Secularist\u2019, thus, refers to person who favours secularism.<\/span><\/p>\n \n The above explains why, upon studying the various principles of human right, I said that human-rightism is based on secularism. There are ideas and notions in the doctrine of human rights that collide head-on with some fundamental teachings of certain religions or against the established norms of ethics and morality.<\/span><\/p>\n \n When a conflict occurs, the tendency is always for the human-rightism to prevail. This is not right as a more appropriate approach is to sort out means to reconcile the two.<\/span><\/p>\n \n It is true that certain religions do suppress certain things that may come under the purview of basic human rights. It became worse when religion was manipulated as a tool to legitimize or justify certain political powers of certain people. This is reflective from the coinage of the \u2018church-state relationship\u2019 in human history.<\/span><\/p>\n \n Historical facts show that when the two forces came together, a lot of requirements and restrictions were imposed on the masses. In\u00a0<\/span>Europe<\/span>, at certain points of time, the intellectual freedom was tightly controlled by religious institutions for centuries. Those who questioned the rationality of certain religious principles, let alone if they were proved wrong and contradictory to sound logical conclusions, were cruelly prosecuted, and were branded as blasphemers, criminals against religion.<\/span><\/p>\n \n But not all religions are suppressive against human rights, political or civil. Islam, for instance, from its very inception preserves and promotes them, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. This is evident from a treaty between Muslims and non-Muslims almost 1400 years ago known as the Medinan Charter where basic human rights were recognized and honoured by the government of the day.<\/span><\/p>\n \n So any statement to the effect that religion does not support human rights may be true to certain religions but not necessarily the case with certain others. Do not assume that what has been experienced by Christianity, for example, is applicable and transferable to Islam.<\/span><\/p>\n \n If transgressions of human rights are found in the tradition of Islam, do not blame the religion, but chastise the perpetrators who may not understand their religion properly. Anything against the welfare and good interest of man, Muslim or otherwise, is never a part of Islam.<\/span><\/p>\n \n I am a strong believer in the notion that the most appropriate understanding of human-rightism is within the framework of religion. Meaning, should there any contradiction between the two, the preference must be given to the latter.<\/span><\/p>\n \n If one talks about ethics and morality, one cannot but to admit that its values are ultimately derived from religious teachings. There are no real good or evil values outside religion. Good values are there in all religions, and most of them, if not all, are in parallelism with each other.<\/span><\/p>\n \n It is in this sense of ethical parallelism that secularism becomes the common enemy of all religions as the former promotes the relativity theory of values. It is in this regard that one is obviously wrong to argue that religion is compatible with secularism, especially in the case of Islam.<\/span><\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018Religion\u2019 is a belief in, or the worship of, a god or gods. The\u00a0Oxford Dictionary & Thesaurus\u00a0defines it as the belief in a superhuman controlling power, especially in a personal God or gods entitled to obedience and worship. It may also refer to anything to which one is totally devoted and which rules one\u2019s life.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_analytify_skip_tracking":false,"_wpzoom_pinterest_image_url":"","_wpzoom_pinterest_hidden_image":"0","_wpzoom_pinterest_description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-star","category-220","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}