مذہب کی تعریف(Definition) اور مغربی فکر کی مشکلات کا تنقیدی مطالعہ

Abstract

Religion has always been a major area of study in modern sociological studies in the west. Defining religion has also been a challenge for modern western scholarship. What Religion is and what is not? Number of definitions produced in response of this question. Consequently we find different definitions of religion that are not only competing but sometime contradicting to each other. In this article we tried to understand the background of the differences of western approaches on the definition of religion and its consequences on sociological studies of religion. The comparison of these definitions reveals that agreed upon definition was never the objective of these studies and these were scholarly assumption not an output of sociological study of religion. Hence, we cannot accept them as a result of discourse but it may be provide initial bases to start research in the field.