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From Issue: 587 [Read full issue]

Religious Urge

It is through religious experience alone that we can arrive, rightly or wrongly, at standards of moral and ethical evaluation independent of the ephemeral changes in our environment; at the recognition of a moral Good worth striving for, and of a moral Evil that must be avoided. By all objective canons, there is always the possibility of a religion, any religion, being mistaken in its metaphysical premises. Therefore, our acceptance or rejection of any religion must, in the last resort, be guided by our experience and our reason, which tell us how far that particular religion agrees with people's ultimate needs, physical and spiritual.

But this necessity of exerting our critical faculties with regard to religion does not distract from the fundamental proposition that it is religion alone that can endow our life with a meaning, and can, thus, promote in us the urge to conform our behaviour to a pattern of moral values entirely independent of the momentary constellation of our existence. To phrase is differently, it is religion alone that can provide a broad platform for an agreement, among large groups of people, as to what is Good and therefore desirable, and what is Evil and therefore to be avoided. Could there be any doubt that such an agreement is an absolute, indispensable requirement for any sort of order in human relations?

Considered from this viewpoint, the religious urge (taking the word 'religion' in its widest sense) is not a mere passing phase in the history of human development but rather the ultimate source of ethics and morality; not the outcome of cheap credulity which any age could 'outgrow' but rather the only answer to a real, basic need of people at all times and in all environments. In other words, it is an instinct.

Compiled From:
Islam: The Way of Revival,"Is Religion Relevant Today" - Muhammad Asad, pp. 5, 6

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