The origins of religions

The largest religious grouping in the world would be the Abrahamic faiths. Islam calls them the People of the Book (Ahl al-Kitāb in Arabic), a term used to designate non-Muslims to whom the scriptures have been revealed. The three types of adherents to faiths that the Qur'an mentions as People of the Book are the Jews, Sabians and Christians and Islam recognises all three of these religions. There are many references in the Qur’an regarding the People of the Book.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Many religionists do not understand their own religion let alone the religion of others. It is even worse for Muslims because they have been taught not to become too familiar with non-Islamic religions lest they get influenced or become ‘misled’ by ‘false teachings’, which may result in them becoming apostates, or at the very least ‘confused’.  

Hence Muslims will insulate and isolate themselves from the other religions and will, for sure, not want to research into the non-Islamic religions even for academic purposes. They would rather remain ignorant than become enlightened and maybe violate Islam in any way, unwittingly or otherwise.

I try to make Muslims understand that knowledge is power and this would include knowledge about the other religions, and there are certainly many indeed. However, most Muslims would be of the opinion that by reading up on the other religions this may expose you to the danger of allowing Satan to mislead you. In fact, the Muslims believe you should not even be reading up on your own religion and if you want to learn then go seek out a guru or ustaz and learn from him.

Books must never be your teacher, they will argue. If you depend on books for knowledge, then Satan will become your teacher. Hence you must learn from a human teacher to avoid Satan becoming your teacher when you attempt to learn from books minus a human teacher.

Muslims are also of the opinion that everything comes under theology. Even the history about religions is considered theology. But theology is about dogma while history is about events. And while dogma deals with faith, history deals with events. So why can’t theology and history be separated?

The danger with lumping history under theology would be that history might be tailored or doctored to fit into the dogma. Hence history may need to be ‘adjusted’ so that it does not contradict dogma. In other words, whenever dogma and history disagree, dogma would override history. History would have to be ‘rewritten’ to support dogma.

This is not a problem just with Muslims but with all religionists. They fear looking at history independently of dogma lest that raises questions as to the accuracy of certain dogmatic teachings. Ignorance is bliss, as they say, so they rather remain in ignorance than open up a can of worms that may shake their faith. Better we not know than we know and start doubting.

Religion did not fall from the sky. Religion evolved and transformed. And this is a point that many religionists find hard to accept. If religion fell from the sky then it clearly came from God. If religion evolved and transformed then there has to be a history and this would mean there also has to be roots or origins.

The largest religious grouping in the world would be the Abrahamic faiths. Islam calls them the People of the Book (Ahl al-Kitāb in Arabic), a term used to designate non-Muslims to whom the scriptures have been revealed. The three types of adherents to faiths that the Qur'an mentions as People of the Book are the Jews, Sabians and Christians and Islam recognises all three of these religions. There are many references in the Qur’an regarding the People of the Book.

Let us, however, rewind to earlier religions, which some scholars consider the roots or origins of the Abrahamic faiths.

Mithraism was a religion popular with the Roman military and was the religion that was brought to Britain before the birth of Christ. Eventually, the Britons and Saxons embraced Mithraism although there was a tug-of-war later between paganism and Christianity after the Romans left and Christianity began to take root in Britain.

It was mainly a contest between the druids and the priests and of course Christianity won when the kings embraced Christianity because the king had the power to impose the death sentence on pagans who refused to convert to Christianity. Hence it was not dogma but the sword that won the day.

However, Mithraism itself was not originally a Roman religion. It was a Persian religion that was later adopted by the Greeks and even later by the Romans. We must remember that Persia was already an empire much earlier but was later replaced by the Greek Empire and after that by the Roman Empire.

One interesting point to more, though, is that Mitra is a Sanskrit word, which is found in the Rig Veda and means friend or friendship and is inscribed in the peace treaty between the Hittites and the kingdom of Mitanni at about 1400 BC.

One very important ritual in Mithraism is the sacrifice of the bull, which was also a ritual of the old pre-Islamic Arabic religion. The slaying of the bull is celebrated as the Mithraic New Year on 25th December, which was also the birthday of Mithras, the offspring of the sun. December 25th is also considered the birthday of Christ and the birth of Christ is also beginning of the Christian year.

Some scholars have identified the ancient Aryan deity, who appears in Persian literature as Mithras, as the Hindu god Mitra of the Vedic hymns. Others say that the Graeco-Roman representation of the slaying of the bull is also an event in Zoroastrian cosmogony described in the Zoroastrian text.

Hence there appears to be many overlaps between these various pre-Christianity and pre-Islamic religions. Some studies even suggest that Mithras was of a virgin birth, although there is no text to support this argument, plus Mithraism also has the communion, the taking of the consecrated bread and wine.

Zoroastrianism emerged out of a common prehistoric Indo-Iranian religious system dating back to early 2,000 BC. Most scholars believe that the key concepts of Zoroastrian eschatology and demonology influenced the Abrahamic religions. On the other hand, Zoroastrianism itself inherited ideas from other belief systems. Hence Zoroastrianism, which is the root of the Arabic religious belief, is itself not original.

That, in a nutshell, is what some scholars view as the origins of the various modern-day religions. And they hold the view that none of today’s religions are original but evolved, transformed or mutated from earlier religions. But this would be true only if your take into consideration their history minus the dogma. Religionists, however, would disagree with this view and will insist that their religion is unique and came directly from God and that nothing was borrowed from earlier religions.