Response paper to Orientalism and Religion (Academic study of Religion )

Defining religion is more complicated than practicing it. Western scholars have many stories about that. When many of them want to define the religion as universal term, they get many critics from the other one. It completely happens for long time and never ends till today. The definition of religion is more complicated than its practices among them.

The problem of defining religion among the scholars arises because of two factors: the first is from philosophical side, and the second is the limitation of language. The first factor, they build their knowledge or science based on the enlightenment. Enlightment is one project for using rational interpretation and leaving religious teaching. It can be traced when many scholars proclaimed themselves as free people, especially from religion. It does not wonder because for long time they felt that the cause of the decadences of their civilization is religion, especially the church. Therefore they tried to throw away all of church teaching and changed to be more rational than before. From philosophical side, it will give them many implications when they tried to define what religion is. It gives them a big gap, because they made the gap first.

The second factor is the limitation of language. This problem is huge especially recently when our era begins, what we call it as “postmodern era”. This era concerns with the same things, the language. The postmodernists give us frame of language lacks to define something. In other word, no language can be determined as perfect language for determining something. The definition of religion may be suitable for one religion or one society, but it does not guarantee will suitable for the others. The limited language is one of the great critics for the modernist scholars who believe in universal principle, because it contains many hidden agenda within every term.

The Orientalism has gotten many critics. For instance, Edward said conveyed one of the popular critics, that Orientalism is another word of Eurocentrism. This term is more suitable for Europe people than other society and also contains hidden agenda about colonialization. This will be more interesting to discuss about the different understanding about religion. The most important is that practicing religion is easier than defining it.