modern age who confuse deen with religion have posed this
question, and stoutly maintain that in cannot do so. They point out
that in the past the fruits of religion have been not peace and
harmony but strife and discord. Cassirer’s criticism of religion
deserves to be quoted in full:
Religion remains a riddle not only in a theoretical but also in an ethical
sense. It is fraught with theoretical antinomies and with ethical
contradictions. It promises us a communion with nature, with men,
with supernatural powers and the gods themselves. Yet its effect is the
very opposite. In its concrete appearance, it becomes the source of the
most profound dissensions and fanatic struggles among men. Religion
claims to be in possession of an absolute truth, but its history is a
history of errors and heresies. It gives us the promise and prospect of a
transcendent world, far beyond the limit of our human experience –
and it remains human, all too human.(5)
It is certainly a devastating criticism, and as it has been made by a
leading thinker of the present age it deserves our serious
consideration. To examine it, point by point, will take us far afield.
We can only indicate the general line our defence of deen, as
distinguished from religion, should take. The difficulty with
Professor Cassirer is, as is the case with most of the critics of
religion, that he has not studied deen as such but some particular
religions, and those too which were either man-made or the revealed
ones, though true in their origin, were subsequently vitiated by
human interpolations. He would but have reached a different
conclusion if he had studied deen. A true religion, if at all deen is
styled so, is not a riddle; it rather solves so many riddles of man and
the universe. There are no antinomies in a true religion. On the
other hand, it reconciles contradictions in life and harmonises the
opposites in human behaviour. It is true that religion has bred strife
in the past in human society and that the religious communities have
been torn by dissensions. But that is the result of the imperfect
vision of truth entertained by each contending group. Deen, on the
other hand, breeds humility and modesty, not arrogance and
presumption. Men have certainly fought among themselves in the
name of religion. Their motives were political or economic,
masquerading as religious. But the man believing in deen is unwilling
to impose his views on others. Finally, deen involves the belief in a
transcendent world but it is wrong to say that this transcendent
The Function of Deen 49