ABSTRACT
The worship of the gods (or God) which is usually associated with the practice of rituals is now described by the well-established term ‘religion’. In the Enlightenment period the discussion centred around the idea of religion being natural to man achievable by reason alone. In this period the idea of contrasting ‘natural’ with ‘revealed’ religion was born. The idea that ‘religion’ describes a universal human activity, as a result of which we have the various religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and so on, is now well established, although some Christian theologians still refuse to accept such description because of the fear of relativisation. The Qur’an also, Smith points out, gives a descriptive characteristic name for the religion preached within its pages, unlike the names of the other religions of the world whose names (Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and so on) were given to them by outsiders.
