RELIGION VS FAITH

It's been a while since I touched upon this topic, but now some of my academic work prompted me to make this brief inquiry. So, there is a common misconception between religion and faith. In the minds of many, these two conceptually different categories are often being equated. However, the concept of faith or belief is essentially opposite to that of the religion. While faith is directed inwards and beyond - to the soul's contemplation of the world and connection with the perceived divine; religion is a system of conformity that aims to institutionalise and utilise the raw faith of an individual for the purpose of serving the needs of the community and power structures. So, where faith seeks truth and spiritual connection, religion implies conformity, homogeneous society, hierarchy, obedience to the institutions of power, denial of our individual psychological differences and stigmatisation of inquiry. Where faith is a natural phenomenon, religion is a social construct of power structures and homogeneity.

The Structural Logic of Gender Hierarchy in Islam and Conceptual Contradictions

A common defence of Islam is that the Qur'an never explicitly states that women are inferior to men. However, this defence misses the core issue. Hierarchies do not need to be stated explicitly. They can be embedded within the structure of a system itself. And verbal expressions of

The Problem of Transmission: Why Divine Revelation Through Books Makes Little Sense

For centuries, religious traditions grounded their authority in sacred texts that claimed to originate from divine revelation. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all rely, in different ways, upon the idea that God communicated guidance to humanity through historically transmitted scripture – a sacred book. What interests me here is not whether spiritual

GENDERED IMBALANCE: THE ASSYMETRY OF CARE

So, here is something I’ve been thinking about since I looked into the 'how' of the construction of gender identity in my research. Why is it that men statistically seem happier in relationships, while many women feel happier out of them, especially after divorce or widowhood. There’

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The Structural Logic of Gender Hierarchy in Islam and Conceptual Contradictions

The Problem of Transmission: Why Divine Revelation Through Books Makes Little Sense

GENDERED IMBALANCE: THE ASSYMETRY OF CARE