Shadow Boxing: The Missionary Encounter with Christian Theology in World Religions

Missionary-scholar Jim Harries investigates whether the term “world religion” is a Western construct and points us toward a new way of sharing the story of Jesus that is free of this stricture.

 

Abstract

Globalised Western hegemony has resulted in the obscurest parts of the world having a contrived front to present to Western visitors and investigators. In European languages, many of these fronts are known as world religions. These European-reified inventions can significantly contribute to people’s self-identity vis-à-vis the West. This article suggests that Westerners engaging with communities in relation to their ‘religions’ easily end up engaging their own reflections, boxing their own shadows. The existence of such reflections of the West is what it is here suggested undermined the enthused 19^th century comparative theology project. Although created by those deeply influenced by Christianity, world religions are generally idolatrous. Formal dialogue with such Western inventions, apart from confusing the West, can further solidify what was originally reified, and cause efforts at Christian evangelism to falter and flounder. Engaging Christian mission in indigenous languages and without large amounts of outside resources results in responding to people’s actual ways of life rather than communicating ‘through Europe’ to reified world religions. Thus by avoiding contrived contexts, mission effectiveness can be streamlined.  

Introduction

The scholars who interpreted accounts and findings of 18^th and 19^th century explorers were deeply rooted in traditions of Western Christendom. They were accustomed to describing the Christian religion in terms of its dependence on a holy text, in terms of its doctrines that determined particular practices, in terms of beliefs, prayer, worship, and fulfilling of a complimentary role to a secular government. The scholars interpreted the practices they learned about people in other parts of the world in the way that was familiar to them. Hence, they made what have subsequently come to be known as other ‘world religions’ appear to be parallels to Western Christianity.

 

What happened to ‘comparative theology’?

19^th century Europe was characterised by much intense Christian belief.[1] One product of this that came under the heading of “comparative theology” was a “voluminous literature, which once filled the libraries of Europe and North America” (Masuzawa 2005:72). Mysteriously, nowadays Masuzawa tells us, this literature is “rarely read, and its very existence hardly recognised” (2005:72). What happened?

The major focus in Masuzawa’s text is on the invention of world religions. Her historical research unearthed an 18^th century belief that there were essentially four groups of religions in the world. Those were “Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, and the rest” (Masuzawa 2005:47). Within this view, Christians are clearly the ones who are OK. Jews and Mohammedans (i.e. Muslims) “in some way did possess religion, but obviously did not have it quite right” (2005:49). The ‘rest’ were idolaters, hence the early 19^th century adage “nations ignorant of God, contrive a wooden one” (Goodrich 1834:14).

The above account of the known religions of the world should be read with the understanding that, contrary to widespread assumption, the modern comprehension of what a ‘religion’ is arose around 1700 (Cavanaugh 2009:160). Before that time, people neither had ‘religions’ or discussed or debated about religions. Early modern people did not explore belief systems as if they were stand-alone systems. Instead they were recognising that there are different nations or peoples (Masuzawa 2005:61). Prior to 1700, the English term religion was most often used to refer to the practices of Christians sufficiently devoted to their faith to join monastic orders (Cavanaugh 2009:64). The religious were understood in contrast to the secular. The term secular was used to refer to priests who worked outside of the monasteries (2009:80). The four-part classification of religions mentioned above is therefore not very ancient. The fact that it might have been a European norm by the first half of the 19^th Century should not have us think that it was such for centuries before that.

Masuzawa explores the emergence by the early 20^th century of a world religions discourse. The previous four-way classification of the 19^th century had by this time disappeared. In its place was a new scheme, apparently arising almost spontaneously, of around eleven recognised ‘world religions’.[2]

In her examination of relevant scholarly endeavours in the 19^th century, Masuzawa points us to two schools of thought. “Comparative theology”, she tells us, was held in “contradistinction to comparative religion”, the latter also being known as “history of religions” or “science of religion” (Masuzawa 2005:22). Unlike comparative religion, comparative theology was in due course “deemed not scientific” (2005:23). On this basis, given the rise of the credibility of science in the 19^th century, comparative religion continued from strength to strength, whereas comparative theology, that assumed Christianity to be uniquely singular and in the end “beyond compare” (2005:23), was rejected.

I want to suggest that the above discussion has a lot of relevance to contemporary missionary practice. Even those who claim to be entirely Bible believing Christians cannot get away from the context in which they are living. One’s belief in the Bible must always be impacted by a context. Part of the contemporary Western context is the ongoing, widely held supposition that comparative evaluation of ‘religions’ ought to be scientific and not theological. The ongoing rejection of any supposition that a ‘comparison’ between religions should be based on theology is a major factor, I suggest, that has helped to turn today’s young people away from pure Gospel ministry towards mission-as-social-action and development. The thesis I want to propose is that the underlying reason for this turn away from pure Gospel ministry is that the popular understanding of other religions, i.e. world religions plus others like ‘African religions’, has been constructed on the back of Christian theology. Christian theology fails to critique them, because Christian theology was the very scaffolding around which they were built and the very blueprint on the basis of which they were designed. While now hidden from view, such implicit means of their historic construction leaves other ‘religions’, as designed by the West, relatively immune to Christian theological critique.

Christianity is these days no longer considered “beyond compare” (see above). In contemporary times even missionaries are frequently forced to consider Christianity to be only one of a number of comparable options, and sometimes an arbitrary choice. The reason the discipline of ‘comparative theology’ had to be rejected was because it was comparing things that were portrayed as being essentially the same (in so far as they were all defined by Western Protestants) as if they were different.

 

How comparable ‘world religions’ emerged

Two very prominent ‘world religions’ often considered to be in ‘competition’ with Christianity are Buddhism and Hinduism. I want to consider briefly how, according to Masuzawa and Srikantan, Buddhism and Hinduism emerged from the category of ‘the rest’ so as to become members of the new high-status multi-faith category of world religions.[3] I use this consideration of Buddhism and Hinduism to help to enlighten us about the status of ‘world religions’ in general, by comparison with Christianity.

Given the recent hegemony of world religions discourse, one might think that Buddhism just always was Buddhism ever since it was founded, but that Europeans took until the 19^th century to ‘discover’ it. This has been the popular view. Almond, however, tells us a different story. According to Almond, Buddhism was actually not “waiting in the wings … to be discovered” (1988:12). On the contrary, by mid-19^th century, the “West alone, knew what Buddhism was, is and ought to be” (1988:13). That is, only Westerners were at the time seriously researching a history that no one else knew. The forefathers of today’s Buddhists had to be told that they were Buddhists, and what Buddhism historically entailed, by Westerners (1988:4). The Westerners researched by Almond who did this were Victorian Christians.[4] Because they were Victorian Christians much of the discourse that defined Buddhism was, and in many ways still is “uniquely Victorian” (1988:ix) and uniquely Christian. Edward Said explained: “[that] orientalism makes sense at all depends more on the West than on the orient, and this sense is indirectly indebted to various Western techniques of representation that make the orient visible [and] clear” (Said 2001:47). As a result, Buddhist ‘religion’, shackled together by Western Christians, through a process that included some “mischievous” reporting (Almond 1988:2, citing Richard Collins, a 19^th century missionary to India and Ceylon) became “a formidable rival to Jesus Christ” (Almond 1988:2 citing George Cobbold, 1894).

Srikantan gives us an in many ways parallel account to that of Buddhism above with respect to Hinduism (2015). Srikantan is especially concerned with legal systems. He considers in this respect the colonial history of India. By tracing the work of various historical figures, he illustrates the British colonialist’s concern that a legal system be put in place in India, and that the system should be peculiarly Indian. Colonialists paid particular attention to local Indian leaders’ decisions as recorded in various cases and judgments. They then sought to systematise the same into legal codes (2015:54). Srikantan points out that although examples (i.e. cases) on which the new Indian legal system was to be built came from India, the logic applied to the cases by the colonialists interpreting them was very much Western. This logic, while at times secular, was also theological, based on the Christian Scriptures rooted in the history of the Western church.[5] “The manner in which custom is constituted as legal knowledge” Srikantan argues “is connected to Christian theology” (2015:60). As a result, the process engaged by colonialists in India that ended up establishing Hindu law codes followed the previous European pattern “where[by] custom was upheld but juxtaposed against the alternative of God and His law” (2015:63). “Mosaic Law … was thus inherent to the agenda of legal reform” by a process of “theologization” (2015:92), a function that Indian scriptures the Vedas “cannot perform” (2015:79). These were the kinds of processes that I refer to above as misunderstandings of translation, that resulted in the “reification of Hinduism” (Masuzawa 2005:286). When Indians themselves adopted what the colonialists left for them, what they had was “not unlike the liberal Protestantism of the West” (Srikantan 2015:297).

We can observe the same pattern in contemporary terms. Lynch explains ways in which respectable contemporary Islamic movements depend for their thriving on Christianity and on the West (2011). She does this by exploring what she calls “Religious Humanitarianism” (the title of her article). Unlike their Christian equivalents, Lynch discovered that Muslim NGOs functioning in Palestine do not even pretend to say that their charitable intentions are rooted in Islam (Lynch 2011:209, 212, 213, 215, 216). Instead Muslim organisations claim to be secular. Presumably they do this on the understanding that secularism is non-religious, and that it is not Christian, and so that it is somehow compatible with genuine Islamic faith. Yet, Lynch tells us, as do others, secularism has strong and deep Christian roots (2011:209). If it were revealed that Islamic-religious humanitarianism is drawing on Christian teaching, this might be taken as something of a scandal. Hence Islam’s contemporary dependence on Christianity is one of the world’s best kept secrets.

Somali NGOs in Nairobi remain silent on their Islamic identity – fearing that otherwise acquiring funds could become more difficult (2011:210). Such silence enables some Muslim NGOs to enjoy the financial support of progressive Western Christians (2011:209). The above is to say that contemporary Islamic identities that seek favour with the West are, like other so-called world ‘religions’, very much ‘made in the West’. Those who take Muslim Scriptures sufficiently seriously are obliged to do something very different. A more literal interpretation of Islamic scriptures (the Qu’ran and the hadith) would leave much less room for the principles of compassion, love (in the sense of giving oneself for sinful others, Matthew 5:46) and forgiveness that underlie international aid provision. An Indonesiam Muslim leader illustrates this well when he stated that “The Qur’an is not a book of law but a source of law. If the Qur’an is considered a book of law, Muslims will become the most wretched people in the world” (Mohammad Amien Rais cited by Stepan (2011:131)). Traditional Islam prevents loss through conversion to Christianity by radical shaming, ostracising and even killing those who convert. Yet Islamic religion also has another friendlier face; made by western theology, laundered through being processed through secularism. One side effect of this which is the focus of this article is that it makes comparison between Islam and Christianity more difficult. This is particularly so when using English. Because Christianised Islam is communicated especially using English, efforts at comparing Islam with Christianity end up by comparing Christianity with itself.

I was asked to teach ATR (African Traditional Religions) to African students in Kenya at Kima International School of Theology in about 1998.[6] It seemed strange that I, a Westerner, should be asked to teach African students about their own traditional practices. I considered this a privilege, and took the opportunity it presented to learn more about my African students and their communities. What surprised me, however, was when in subsequent years African colleagues asked to teach the same course frequently borrowed my syllabus and drew on my notes. Surely they had a much better knowledge of ATR than I, so why re-use my materials, I asked myself? I was forced to realise that while my indigenous colleagues knew about ATR ‘as practiced’, they were less expert or confident with how ATR could be articulated using English. ‘Knowing’ ATR was far from adequate when we were preparing students for an examination system originating in the USA. Our African students had to learn to know ATR as an American or Brit would know it.

A few years later at the same college I was asked to teach a world religions course. At the beginning that seemed straightforward enough. I picked up books in the library on world religions. I found world religions interesting to explore and to articulate. Gradually though it dawned on me that I had always to teach world religions as perceived by Europeans. This was regardless of how my African students may have perceived the same ‘religions’ had they themselves met their practitioners. World religions as practiced, as my students might perceive them, and world religions as described by Europeans, were two different things. It was the latter Western view of world religions, effectively a view screened through a western theological lens, and not how the students and their own people may perceive ‘world religions’, that students needed to know in order to pass exams.

On arrival in Kenya I had assumed that Kenyan Christians believe in God. Yet I found that their response to ‘God’ was quite different to that I had been used to as a Christian in the UK. In due course I was enabled to study a term widely translated as ‘God’ there in western Kenya, known as Nyasaye. Unlike God, Nyasaye seemed to be the prosperity arising from loud emotional pleading (see also Harries 2011). Instead of a 1-hour long meeting with a presumed spiritual father, a church service in Kenya could be a 3-hour experience of instruction on ‘how to prosper’. Someone having made a decision to consider Nyasaye a translation of the English term God did not spontaneously nullify those African people’s historical understandings of Nyasaye. Saying that Kenyans had adopted the world religion ‘Christianity’ could be to miss some profound differences with what I had in the UK known as ‘Christianity’ (Gifford 2015:4-5 discusses this issue). The translation of Nyasaye as God resulted in an apparent theologisation of ATR.

In due course, I had to realise that what I as an outsider from the UK perceived Kenyan Christians as doing when I observed them could be very different to their self-perception. My efforts at describing and systematising their practices using English ended up being means of satisfying theological criterion considered necessary from my British background that might have been totally absent in Africa. Such a perception was far from adequate for profound and true engagement with Kenyan people’s self-understandings. ‘Problems’ that seemed to be there when their church practice was examined using (linguistic and cultural) English could be hot air with respect to people’s own indigenous views of what they were doing. I realised that in Africa also ‘religion’ was being invented. Engaging with such an invented (or reified) ‘religion’ results in an insulating barrier of apparent similarity between where African people are ‘at’ and the heart content of the Christian Gospel as practiced in the West. That is, as a Christian missionary, to reach people ‘where they were at’ required more than an engagement with African religion (Christian or otherwise) as it was presented in English. Engaging in English resulted in meeting with an apparently already theologised ‘religion’ brought into existence in prior encounters between Africans and Westerners, that often had few visible meaningful local roots.

It should be becoming clear that Western Protestant Christians created ‘world religions’. In many cases at least, these remain grossly dependent on the West for their ongoing sustenance. (Indigenous practitioners of these religions do not themselves propagate their identity as the West perceives them. Such identity only continues on the back of Western scholarship, Western economic subsidy and the Western media.) Even the means other religions use to demonstrate their own superiority over Christianity is often of Christian origin. This can be illustrated by a quote from Vivekananda: “the Hindus have received their religion through their revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end”. This was Vivekananda’s way of staking a claim for Hinduism on the world religions’ map. He staked this claim, whether he realised it or not, by echoing biblical terminology (Masuzawa 2005:264). Mainline churches in Africa can remain enormously dependent on funds from their Western headquarters (Gifford 2015:93-4). One reason at least for this, is that the foreign funds are required to maintain those aspects of church functioning that according to the West are supposed to be there, but that actually only continue on the back of that funding.

I hope my reader understands clearly that I do not say the above as a triumphalist wanting to show off how much more superior my ‘religion’ is than others. Rather, I am bringing to the surface an important aspect of history and contemporary truth regarding the status quo in our age. My particular interest in the light of the above is for moral justice. Christianity is the primordial source of the flourishing of so-called religions in our contemporary world. Realising this should confirm our moral imperative to share the Gospel more widely. That is to realise that much of what is ‘admirable’ in other world religions that seems to be similar to Christianity, are actually dependent creations of the theology of the latter. Sharing the Gospel of Jesus with others is the way they can be helped to be sustainable parties to benefits that God desires them to enjoy.

My awareness of the above has come to me, in part at least, as a result of a long term of living in Africa. Knowing what they once had, and perceiving what the Gospel has to offer, many Africans (those not caught up in the stringent rules of Islam mentioned above, sometimes on fear of death)[7] are rushing for Christianity. At the same time, other people and certainly major institutions concerned for the future of Africa and the world seem determined to turn a blind eye to this scenario. Political correctness gives other ‘world religions’ credit that belongs to Christ. This may well be the deception for which, in millennia to come, the twentieth century will be known.

 

Implications for mission

I want to consider the implications of the above insights for contemporary mission. How might realising that other ‘world religions’ are formed out of Christian theology affect global mission efforts?

One immediate implication would seem to be that mission should be stepped up! That is to say, if other ‘religions’ are not actually ‘independent religions’ as we have imagined them to be, but un-orthodox imitations of Christianity created by previous generations of Christians, then presumably we would prefer people to have the ‘real’ thing rather than counterfeit copies? In the past, the existence of other religions might have cowed missionaries. Depending on the liberality of the potential missionaries and the force of the world religions discourse received by them, they may have declined to share the Gospel of Christ out of respect for people’s pre-existing beliefs. We don’t need any decline in respect for others. Yet in the light of this article, respect may better be shown by sharing the Gospel rather than by declining to do so. Should we refuse to help someone who is lost because they do not know they are lost? Is it respectful to do so? Is it respectful to deny the Gospel to people because powerful members of their communities present their own ‘religion’, as taught by previous generations of Westerners, as if it is a kind of Christianity?

I can add more on the issue of respect. I would certainly not like to be known for advocating a drop in respect levels by Christians to others. I could perhaps talk of true-respect. That is, to respect a person for who they actually are, not for who they are portrayed as being by what we have now discovered to have been faulted reasoning. There is probably something to be gained here by going back to pre-19^th century classificatory systems mentioned by Masuzawa (2005:47) in which “the rest”, who were yet to become Christians, were considered to be heathen or pagans. They were seen as having a lot in common all around the world. More recently some have alluded to such by referring to folk religions,[8] e.g. folk Islam, folk Hinduism, folk Buddhism, etc. It is this ‘folk’ element to people’s ways of life that I am here referring to. Very often, if not typically, the ‘folk’ element is dominant.

What does this ‘folk’ nature of world religions mean? Let us look at an example. Many people in the west may well say that they are short of money. Alcoholics, people living on the streets because of a broken marriage, people who are unemployed because they are not dependable in the workplace, people suffering from TB – may all be short of money. Yet in every case something else underlies such shortage. Resolving their problem or helping them to get on better in life may well not involve giving them cash in hand. Any shortage of money may actually be caused by alcoholism, marriage breakdown, not being able to hold a job down, the presence of the TB virus, and so on. True help for these people requires getting to the underlying problems what they communicate as their issue (a shortage of money). So also adherents of various world religions present a particular face to the West. That face invites a particular response. The face is one that resembles western Protestantism. The wise Christian missionary must see through and beyond such face, to the hurting hearts and souls of people who God loves. That is what, in the interests of true justice, we as Western Christians should be respecting and responding to.

Recognition can be empowerment. People are defined by others. It is evident from what we have already discussed above, that world religions were formed in the course of their being recognised by the West. It follows that they are further empowered and confirmed by further recognition given by the same West, especially Western Christians. Biblically, empowering of other-than Yahweh is idolatry. This is where the whole world religions discourse can be considered to be foundationally idolatrous. In the Kenyan Bible college I taught at mentioned above, we taught ‘world religions’ to help Christian students know what they are ‘up against’. This might have been a two-edged sword, because we were reifying non-Christian religions to a status of being comparable to Christianity.

A key to the solution of the above, albeit relatively unrecognised in the literature on world religions, is in choice of language. I have already illustrated the dependence of African ‘religions’ on English above. Because Hinduism as a belief system was created by the West, we would expect Hinduism to hang together as a coherent religion when articulated using English and other Western languages. It is unlikely to come across as a coherent religion when articulated in native Indian languages. Being an external creation, Hinduism as a coherent body of beliefs and practices is likely to be largely absent in the languages indigenous to India. Hence, missionaries’ use of indigenous languages can, through bypassing Western creations, facilitate deep penetration by the Gospel to the hearts of people. At the same time, empowering the idolatry inherent in the world religions discourse can be avoided. Using indigenous languages can enable a much more helpful grasp of the actual issues being faced by the majority world. Therefore, Christian mission should, if at all possible, be carried out using indigenous languages.

Advocacy for dialogue has been widespread in discussions of world religions. The aim has often been to bring different world religions together. This project requires one to presuppose the substantiality of what has reified into existence by colonial and Western scholars. In the light of the above discussion we need to ask ourselves, if the dialogue partners represent different branches of Western invention, then what actually happens in the course of inter-religious discourse? When such formal dialogue occurs it is typically subsidised from the West and dominated by Western languages. For poor countries and people, subsidy of a dialogue can itself be sufficient cause and justification for perpetuating the reification of the religious content that has been invented for them. The use of Western languages in the dialogue will be with respectful to ‘religions’ that have minimal roots in functioning human communities.

Harries (2008) identifies more detailed factors that complicate and can delegitimise inter-cultural and religious dialogue. Issues of translation are much more consequential than is often imagined. To illustrate translation foibles, let us look at truth. In Western languages truth suggests an equivalence between words and what they describe. Amongst Muslims however, this equivalence may not be required, i.e. it is acceptable to tell a non-Muslim untruth.[9] Whereas in Western Christian circles one may be encouraged to ‘speak one’s mind’ to do such as a Muslim can, according to Asad, quickly get one into deep water. Asad explains that a Muslim is free to think or believe whatever they want to. But they should not express anything contrary to Muslim faith (2011:289). This study of just one word, truth, that must be key in dialogue between Christians and Muslims points to deep problems in inter-religious dialogue. What would a study of additional words turn up, when in dialogue between more ‘religions’?

The above paragraph points to weaknesses and potential weaknesses in advocacy for inter-religious dialogue. It seems that only recently has consideration been given over the key question of what language should be used in dialogue. Default plumping for Western languages because they are ‘global’ easily creates the dialogue concerned. I have mentioned resource questions – ‘poor’ religions are unlikely to refuse dialogue that promises material reward. People are unlikely to deny having a ‘religion’ if possession of it is in their economic interests. Experts in that ‘religion’ may well be paid to dialogue with the West. Leaders of the ‘religions’ will benefit in various ways from the structures they are leading. Encouraging inter-religious dialogue can be paying people to be other-than Christian. The lively arena of dialogue that such categories and such activity can provide can be of the nature of a smoke screen that prevents the Gospel from penetrating local contexts and cultures. Western missionaries who engage in ministry using indigenous languages avoid many of the aforementioned pit falls. Vulnerable mission (using local languages and local resources) keeps a missionary in a position of being vulnerable to the actual vicissitudes of the life of the people he is reaching, avoiding being submerged in issues created by colonialism and Western languages.

Part of the real reason for the discrediting of comparative theology in the early decades of the twentieth century should now be becoming clear. Later comparatists, instead of dealing with the actuality of the lives of people outside of the Christian West, were forced to engage with world religions that were in effect creations of western theologians. The ‘world religions’ they engaged with, modelled on Christianity, had built up resistance to the criticism implicit in the comparison with them. From the Western point of view, world religions were resilient to the heretical alternatives of the Christian traditions that had designed their modern clothes.

 

Conclusion

Inter-religious dialogue can accentuate the apparent actuality of reifications of Western creations known as world religions. Powerful religious and secular leaders use such reifications in their own interests. The same have the effect of blocking Gospel truth. The work of comparative theologians that had been all of the rage in the 19^th century was undermined by the Christian scaffolding of created world religions. Today, comparison between religions produces the same problem. Yet within those world religious groupings, and within areas of the world not yet considered to have their own world religions, are hurting people whom God loves.  This article advocates that Western missionaries should seek to bypass the barriers to Christian ministry created by their Western forefathers, to reach the hearts of hurting people around the world with the Gospel of Jesus. World ‘religions’ (and other ‘religions’) that have been created as a result of vagaries of translation into Western languages have minimal existence in indigenous tongues. The true heart and state of people can be perceived and reached when one engages them using their own languages.

 

PR

 

Notes

[1] “If there was any single belief that characterized the Victorian era it was Christian belief. Religion pervaded social and political life to an extent almost unimaginable today” Evans commented in 2011.

[2] Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shinto, (Masuzawa 2005:3), and Sikhism (2005:262)).

[3] Note that the very term ‘world religion’ was once used specifically to refer only to Christianity, that was considered at the time to be the only ‘world religion’ (Masuzawa 2005:119).

[4] In this article I do focus on English language literature, especially that produced in the UK and the USA.

[5] I do consider secularism itself to have very specific theological roots (see Harries 2015 and Harries 2016), meaning to say that the history was secular is to say that it was also theological.

[6] I taught part-time at this school from 1997 to 2011.

[7] I have looked elsewhere (Harries, in press) at how fear of Islam underlies a lot of people’s reluctance to promote Christ through their concern that to do so may be putting themselves into the line of fire. Atheism perhaps avoids some of the venom of Islam, something that its traditions seem not to know how to deal with. I ask whether that is sufficient reason to deny people the truth of Christ?

[8] Here is a definition for ‘folk religion’: “Folk religion is basically made up of certain ethnic or regional religious traditions that practice under the guise of an established religion, but is outside the boundaries of official doctrine and practices. Folk religion’s indigenous or native beliefs are held all over the world, particularly in parts of South America, Africa, China, and Southeast Asia” ( http://www.gotquestions.org/folk-religion.html ).

[9] http://muslimfact.com/bm/terror-in-the-name-of-islam/islam-permits-lying-to-deceive-unbelievers-and-bri.shtml

 

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