Academic literature on the topic 'African monotheism'

The diversity of the African cultures led the scholars to the conclusion of the impossibility of a unique African indigenous religion (AIR); however, this view fails to account for the common spiritual elements found in Africa. Based on these elements, some scholars support the existence of a unique AIR, but these “common elements” are not found in every African culture. This article capitalizes on the scientific monotheism of the Kongo religion, the Bukongo, and its likeness to the solar religion of Egypt to improve the single-AIR approach and show the various AIRs to be results of the devolution of the original unique solar religion kept in the Bukongo. Contrary to the scholastic monotheism, demonstrated to be fallacious, the monotheism of the AIR is proven to be scientific through the use of a cosmological argument whose conclusions are mathematically convergent with Newtonian physics in its interpretation of the movements and stability of bodies at the astronomic and subatomic levels.

John Mbiti, in his attempt to disprove the charge of paganism by EuroAmerican ethnographic and anthropological scholars against African Traditional Religions argues that traditional African religions are monotheistic. He insists that these traditional religious cultures have the same conception of God as found in the Abrahamic religions. The shared characteristics, according to him are foundational to the spread of the “gospel” in Africa. Mbiti’s effort, though motivated by the desire to refute the imperial charge of inferiority against African religions ran, I argue, into a conceptual and descriptive conflation of ATRs with monotheistic faiths. In this paper, I challenge the superimposition of Judeo-Christian categories upon African religions. I argue that monotheism is just a strand, out of many, that expresses belief in God(s), and that it differs substantially from the polytheistic pre-colonial African understanding of religion. I provide a panentheistic paradigm using traditional Igbo ontology and religion to refute Mbiti’s generalization. Keywords: Monotheism, African Traditional Religion, Igbo, Paganism, Theology.

Abstract Our aims are to articulate some core philosophical positions characteristic of Traditional African Religion and to argue that they merit consideration as monotheist rivals to standard interpretations of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. In particular, we address the topics of how God’s nature is conceived, how God’s will is meant to bear on human decision making, where one continues to exist upon the death of one’s body, and how long one is able to exist without a body. For each of these topics, we note how Traditional African Religion posits claims that clash with mainstream Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and that, being prima facie plausible, indicate the need for systematic cross-cultural philosophical debate.

AbstractThe African pre-Christian experience of God has turned out to be the gate through which Yahweh has penetrated Africa. This does not only mean that for the African Christians the Trinity must emerge from Nyambe, Nyame, Nyasaye, and so on—as various African peoples call God—but also that the Son and the Holy Spirit are now constitutive in the identity of those names. In this case, confession of one God (monotheism) is not in the 'common substance-essence' terms of the Greco-Roman heritage, nor in the 'monotheism as one-ness, non-divisible essence' in Islam and Neo-Platonism, nor as oneness in the sense of 'absolute subject' in the philosophy of Idealism. Here, oneness of God is confessed in the context of the fatherhood as contemplated from the point of view of the Father whose NTU is split between the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father in this case is the 'Great Muntu' (God) who uniquely shares the Divine NTU with the Son and the Holy Spirit. In this mix of things, four things are noteworthy: 1) there emerges yet another way of thinking about God, 2) the Christian faith receives alternative resources for renewal of the church, 3) assumptions of conventional theological thinking are once again re-examined, and 4) Christians have an opportunity to use their own cultural identity for God's glory.

Two rulers, one in Africa, one in Asia, are about to undergo the ceremony of baptism following first contact with the Portuguese maritime expansion—but they insist that the rite be conducted in secret. The African ruler is a regional governor (the Mani Soyo) of the Congo King Nzinga Nkuwu who has just converted in 1491. The high king's diplomatic exchanges with the sea captain Diogo Cão had not elicited any real sensation of vulnerability to Portuguese imperial designs, yet he had been happy to convert nonetheless. Now the Mani Soyo is about to follow suit, but he will not have any of his subordinates witnessing the ritual because he does not want them benefiting from the enhanced status and power that the ritual could bestow. In the highlands of Sri Lanka some fifty years later, the King of Kandy is equally intent on keeping his baptismal rites hidden from public view. But his reasons are strikingly different. He does this “lest his people should kill him.” When news of the baptism did leak out rioting followed, and the king had to spread the story that it had all been a ploy to deceive the Portuguese.

AbstractWedded to creativity and spirituality since the dawn of humanity, the symbolisms of the hand and the foot have assumed many religious and artistic forms. This essay explores the artistic and religious significance of the hand and foot in the prehistoric rock art of North Africa and Arabia and examines their various ethnographic and mythological expressions in historical times. It then shows how these symbolisms were restructured in the Qur' n to fit a strictly iconoclastic monotheism. It is a multidisciplinary approach to a collective consciousness that finds its roots in an Afroasiatic substrate and its expression in the artistic and linguistic traditions of the eastern and southern coasts of the Mediterranean.

The global spread of Salafism, though it began in the 1960s and 1970s, only started to attract significant attention from scholars and analysts outside of Islamic studies as well as journalists, politicians, and the general public following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks perpetrated by Al-Qaeda Central. After the attacks, Salafism—or, as it was pejoratively labeled by its critics inside and outside of the Islamic tradition, “Wahhabism”—was accused of being the ideological basis of all expressions of Sunni militancy from North America and Europe to West and East Africa, the Arab world, and into Asia. According to this narrative, Usama bin Laden, Ayman al-Za- wahiri, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and other Sunni jihadis were merely putting into action the commands of medieval ‘ulama such as Ibn Taymiyya, the eighteenth century Najdi Hanbali Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and modern revolutionary ideologues like Sayyid Qutb and ‘Abdullah ‘Azzam. To eradicate terrorism, you must eliminate or neuter Salafism, say its critics. The reality, of course, is far more complex than this simplistic nar- rative purports. Salafism, though its adherents share the same core set of creedal beliefs and methodological approaches toward the interpretation of the Qur’an and hadith and Sunni legal canon, comes in many forms, from the scholastic and hierarchical Salafism of the ‘ulama in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim majority countries to the decentralized, self-described Salafi groups in Europe and North America who cluster around a single char- ismatic preacher who often has limited formal religious education. What unifies these different expressions of Salafism is a core canon of religious and legal texts and set of scholars who are widely respected and referenced in Salafi circles. Thurston grounds his fieldwork and text-based analysis of Salafism in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and home to one of the world’s largest single Muslim national populations, through the lens of this canon, which he defines as a “communally negotiated set of texts that is governed by rules of interpretation and appropriation” (1). He argues fur- ther that in the history of Nigerian Salafism, one can trace the major stages that the global Salafi movement has navigated as it spread from the Arab Middle East to what are erroneously often seen as “peripheral” areas of the Islamic world, Africa and parts of Asia. The book is based on extensive fieldwork in Nigeria including interviews with key Nigerian Salafi scholars and other leading figures as well as a wide range of textual primary sourc- es including British and Nigerian archival documents, international and national news media reports, leaked US embassy cables, and a significant number of religious lectures and sermons and writings by Nigerian Salafis in Arabic and Hausa. In Chapter One, Thurston argues that the Salafi canon gives individ- ual and groups of Salafis a sense of identity and membership in a unique and, to them, superior religious community that is linked closely to their understanding and reading of sacred history and the revered figures of the Prophet Muhammad and the Ṣaḥāba. Salafism as an intellectual current, theology, and methodological approach is transmitted through this can- on which serves not only as a vehicle for proselytization but also a rule- book through which the boundaries of what is and is not “Salafism” are determined by its adherents and leading authorities. The book’s analytical framework and approach toward understanding Salafism, which rests on seeing it as a textual tradition, runs counter to the popular but problematic tendency in much of the existing discussion and even scholarly literature on Salafism that defines it as a literalist, one-dimensional, and puritani- cal creed with a singular focus on the Qur’an and hadith canon. Salafis, Thurston argues, do not simply derive religious and legal rulings in linear fashion from the Qur’an and Prophetic Sunna but rather engage in a co- herent and uniform process of aligning today’s Salafi community with a set of normative practices and beliefs laid out by key Salafi scholars from the recent past. Thurston divides the emergence of a distinct “Salafi” current within Sunnis into two phases. The first stretches from 1880 to 1950, as Sun- ni scholars from around the Muslim-majority world whose approaches shared a common hadith-centered methodology came into closer contact. The second is from the 1960s through the present, as key Salafi institutions (such as the Islamic University of Medina and other Saudi Salafi bodies) were founded and began attracting and (perhaps most importantly) fund- ing and sponsoring Sunni students from countries such as Nigeria to come study in Saudi Arabia, where they were deeply embedded in the Salafi tra- dition before returning to their home countries where, in turn, they spread Salafism among local Muslims. Nigeria’s Muslim-majority north, as with other regions such as Yemen’s northern Sa‘ada governorate, proved to be a fertile ground for Salafism in large part because it enabled local Muslims from more humble social backgrounds to challenge the longtime domi- nance of hereditary ruling families and the established religious class. In northern Nigeria the latter was and continues to be dominated by Sufi or- ders and their shaykhs whose long-running claim to communal leadership faced new and substantive theological and resource challenges following the return of Nigerian seminary students from Saudi Arabia’s Salafi scho- lastic institutions in the 1990s and early 2000s. In Chapters Two and Three, Thurston traces the history of Nigerian and other African students in Saudi Arabia, which significantly expanded following the 1961 founding of the Islamic University of Medina (which remains the preeminent Salafi seminary and university in the world) and after active outreach across the Sunni Muslim world by the Saudi govern- ment and Salafi religious elite to attract students through lucrative funding and scholarship packages. The process of developing an African Salafism was not one-dimensional or imposed from the top-down by Saudi Salafi elites, but instead saw Nigerian and other African Salafi students partici- pate actively in shaping and theorizing Salafi da‘wa that took into account the specifics of each African country and Islamic religious and social envi- ronment. In Nigeria and other parts of West and East Africa, this included considering the historically dominant position of Sufi orders and popular practices such as devotion to saints and grave and shrine visitation. African and Saudi Salafis also forged relationships with local African partners, in- cluding powerful political figures such as Ahmadu Bello and his religious adviser Abubakar Gumi, by attracting them with the benefits of establishing ties with wealthy international Islamic organizations founded and backed by the Saudi state, including the Muslim World League. Nigerian Salafis returning from their studies in Saudi Arabia actively promoted their Salafi canon among local Muslims, waging an aggressive proselytization campaign that sought to chip away at the dominance of traditional political and religious elites, the Sufi shaykhs. This process is covered in Chapter Four. Drawing on key sets of legal and exegetical writ- ings by Ibn Taymiyya, Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and other Salafi scholars, Nigerian Salafis sought to introduce a framework—represented by the canon—through which their students and adherents approach re- ligious interpretation and practice. By mastering one’s understanding and ability to correctly interpret scripture and the hadith, Salafis believe, one will also live a more ethical life based on a core set of “Salafi” principles that govern not only religious but also political, social, and economic life. Salaf- ism, Thurston argues, drawing on the work of Terje Østebø on Ethiopian Salafism, becomes localized within a specific environment.As part of their da‘wa campaigns, Nigerian Salafis have utilized media and new technology to debate their rivals and critics as well as to broad- en their own influence over Nigerian Muslims and national society more broadly, actions analyzed in Chapter Five. Using the Internet, video and audio recorded sermons and religious lectures, books and pamphlets, and oral proselytization and preaching, Nigerian Salafis, like other Muslim ac- tivists and groups, see in media and technology an extension of the phys- ical infrastructure provided by institutions such as mosques and religious schools. This media/cyber infrastructure is as, if not increasingly more, valuable as the control of physical space because it allows for the rapid spread of ideas beyond what would have historically been possible for local religious preachers and missionaries. Instead of preaching political revo- lution, Nigerian Salafi activists sought to win greater access to the media including radio airtime because they believed this would ultimately lead to the triumph of their religious message despite the power of skeptical to downright hostile local audiences among the Sufi orders and non-Salafis dedicated to the Maliki juridical canon.In the realm of politics, the subject of Chapter Six, Nigeria’s Salafis base their political ideology on the core tenets of the Salafi creed and canon, tenets which cast Salafism as being not only the purest but the only true version of Islam, and require of Salafis to establish moral reform of a way- ward Muslim society. Salafi scholars seek to bring about social, political, and religious reform, which collectively represent a “return” to the Prophet Muhammad’s Islam, by speaking truth to power and advising and repri- manding, as necessary, Muslim political rulers. In navigating the multi-po- lar and complex realm of national and regional politics, Thurston argues, Nigerian Salafi scholars educated in Saudi Arabia unwittingly opened the door to cruder and more extreme, militant voices of figures lacking the same level of study of the Salafi canon or Sunni Islam generally. The most infamous of the latter is “Boko Haram,” the jihadi-insurgent group today based around Lake Chad in Nigeria, Chad, and Niger, which calls itself Jama‘at Ahl al-Sunna li-l-Da‘wa wa-l-Jihad and is led by the bombastic Abubakar Shekau. Boko Haram, under the leadership first of the revivalist preacher Mu- hammad Yusuf and then Shekau, is covered at length in the book’s third and final part, which is composed of two chapters. Yusuf, unlike mainstream Nigerian Salafis, sought to weaponize the Salafi canon against the state in- stead of using it as a tool to bring about desired reforms. Drawing on the writings of influential Arab jihadi ideologues including Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and the apocalyptic revolutionary Juhayman al-‘Utaybi, the lat- ter of whom participated in the 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Yusuf cited key Salafi concepts such as al-walā’ min al-mu’minīn wa-l-bara’ ‘an al-kāfirīn (loyalty to the Believers and disavowal of the Disbelievers) and beliefs about absolute monotheism (tawḥīd) as the basis of his revival- ist preaching. Based on these principle, he claimed, Muslims must not only fulfill their ritual duties such as prayer and fasting during Ramadan but also actively fight “unbelief” (kufr) and “apostasy” (ridda) and bring about God’s rule on earth, following the correct path of the community of the Prophet Abraham (Millat Ibrāhīm) referenced in multiple Qur’anic verses and outlined as a theological project for action by al-Maqdisi in a lengthy book of that name that has had a profound influence on the formation of modern Sunni jihadism. Instead of seeing Boko Haram, particularly under Shekau’s leadership, as a “Salafi” or “jihadi-Salafi” group, Thurston argues it is a case study of how a group that at one point in its history adhered to Salafism can move away from and beyond it. In the case of Shekau and his “post-Salafism,” he writes, the group, like Islamic State, has shifted away from the Salafi canon and toward a jihadism that uses only stripped-down elements from the canon and does so solely to propagate a militaristic form of jihad. Even when referencing historical religious authorities such as Ibn Taymiyya, Thurston points out, Boko Haram and Islamic State leaders and members often do so through the lens of modern Sunni jihadi ideologues like Juhay- man al-‘Utaybi, al-Maqdisi, and Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi, figures who have come to form a Sunni jihadi canon of texts, intellectuals, and ideologues. Shekau, in short, has given up canonical Salafism and moved toward a more bombastic and scholastically more heterodox and less-Salafi-than- jihadi creed of political violence. Thurston also pushes back against the often crude stereotyping of Af- rican Islamic traditions and movements that sees African Muslims as being defined by their “syncretic” mix of traditional African religious traditions and “orthodox” Islam, the latter usually a stand-in for “Arab” and “Middle Eastern” Islam. Islam and Islamic movements in Africa have developed in social and political environments that are not mirrors to the dominant models of the Arab world (in particular, Egypt). He convincingly points out that analysis of all forms of African Islamic social and political mobi- lization through a Middle East and Egypt-heavy lens obscures much more than it elucidates. The book includes useful glossaries of key individuals and Arabic terms referenced in the text as well as a translation of a sermon by the late, revered Salafi scholar Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani that is part of the mainstream Salafi canon. Extensive in its coverage of the his- tory, evolution, and sociopolitical and religious development of Salafism in Nigeria as well as the key role played by Saudi Salafi universities and religious institutions and quasi-state NGOs, the book expands the schol- arly literature on Salafism, Islam in Africa, and political Islam and Islamic social movements. It also contributing to ongoing debates and discussions on approaches to the study of the role of texts and textual traditions in the formation of individual and communal religious identity. Christopher AnzaloneResearch Fellow, International Security ProgramBelfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University& PhD candidate, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University

Accumulated research has shown that Western Christian religiosity often predicts prejudice toward various kinds of outgroups. On the contrary, initial recent evidence indicates that East Asian religiosity predicts tolerance of various outgroups—except atheists. To understand these differences, we investigated cognitive (intolerance of contradiction) and emotional (disgust) mechanisms possibly mediating the link between religiosity and prejudice versus tolerance. In Study 1 (295 Westerners of Christian tradition), high disgust contamination and, to some extent, intolerance of contradiction mediated the relationship between religiosity and prejudice against ethnic (Africans), religious (Muslims), moral (homosexuals), and convictional (atheists) outgroups. However, in Study 2 (196 Taiwanese of Buddhist or Taoist tradition), religiosity was unrelated to disgust, and predicted low intolerance of contradiction, and thus tolerance of the same religious, ethnic, and moral outgroups—but still not of atheists. Cultural differences in cognition and emotion seem to explain East–West differences in religious prejudice.

To what extent do the resources of African Traditional Religion (ATR) contribute towards Christian theological discourse and benefit the African church? ATR is accommodated in the African Initiated Churches (AICs). The members of these churches aim to be Christian without losing their African identity. ATR is a religion that was practised throughout Africa before the arrival of the Western missionaries. The core premise of ATR is the maintenance of African culture and its main feature is loyalty to the ancestors and the accompanying rituals that express this loyalty. This study addresses the appropriateness of ATR’s resources in terms of their contribution to the doctrine of the Trinity. When the early church worshipped God the Father and God the Son (Jesus) in the presence of the Holy Spirit, a tension developed. The questions of monotheism versus polytheism and the nature and position of Jesus within the Trinity were put forward and addressed. The doctrine of the Trinity is uniquely Christian and includes the belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God who alone mediates between God and men. There is, on the other hand, an understanding that Africans worship one Supreme Being and venerate ancestors as intermediaries to the one Supreme Being, without clear roles being ascribed to Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. This article enquires whether the process of Africanisation and contextualisation consciously or unconsciously downgraded Jesus Christ as Mediator who came to reveal who God is and to reconcile humankind to him.

This study investigates how Mbiti and Oduyoye articulate their understanding of God in connection with the African traditional religio-cultural heritage to make the concept of God to become relevant to African Christians and to help African Christians feel at home in the Christian faith. Chapter 1 briefly describes the background of the study, the problem statement, the purpose of the study, the research hypothesis, methodology, delimitation, and structure of the study. Chapter 2 provides a historical sketch of origins and development of African theology and diverse types of African theology. This chapter maintains that African theology emerged not only as a theological reaction to the dominant Western interpretation of the gospel in Africa, but also as a theological attempt to secure the African cultural identity by reaffirming the African past. Chapter 3 describes the basic beliefs in African traditional religions, several African ethnic groups’ concepts of God, and the African theologians’ Christianization of the African God by employing Christian theological terms. This chapter concludes that it is not possible to presume a homogenous or one unified concept of God in Africa. One and the same God whom all Africans have worshipped is not real. In chapter 4, Mbiti’s understanding of God is scrutinized in relation to his methodology, the African concept of time, his understanding of revelation and of salvation. Mbiti has maintained African monotheism and ATR(s) as a praeparatio evangelica and has arrived at his conclusion that the God revealed in the Bible is the same as the God worshipped in ATR(s). This chapter criticizes Mbiti’s way of Christian theological interpretation of anthropological data of the African concepts of God. Chapter 5 presents Oduyoye’s understanding of God, her methodology, the status of African women in ATR(s) and the African church, her appreciation of salvation, of the Bible, and of the locus of experience. In Oduyoye’s theology, women’s experience becomes a crucial factor for doing theology, and salvation is understood as liberation from all oppressive conditions. Her understanding of God is closely connected with the theme of liberation. Chapter 6 examines the similarities and differences between the two theologians’ understanding of God, critically compares their way of understanding the interplay of the gospel and African culture, and categorizes the two theologians’ ways with their models of contextualization: Mbiti’s gospel-culture oriented model of contextualization and Oduyoye’s gospel-liberation oriented model of contextualization. By a comparative-dialogical study of the two theologians’ models of contextualization, this chapter attempts to make a dialogue possible between the two, and suggests the interculturation model of contextualization in which each theology keeps its own theological characteristic and has an open mind to learn from the other through mutual understanding. It aims to overcome the absolutism of contextualization, syncretism, cultural relativism, and provincialism, to keep a balance between locality and catholicity, and to affirm cultural identity and Christian identity. On the basis of the interculturation model of contextualization, this chapter proposes some criteria for African Evangelical theology in order to do a biblically faithful and practically relevant theology in Africa. This study also suggests some guidelines to articulate the understanding of God so that it has theological relevance and legitimacy to African Christians as well as to Christians worldwide. Chapter 7, as the final chapter, gives a general summary and concluding suggestions for further research related to the subject of African theology.
Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013.
gm2013
Science of Religion and Missiology
unrestricted

This thesis finds out how the concepts of the divine in African Traditional Religions are similar or different, particularly in Ghana and Lesotho and in other parts of Africa in general. In doing so, the researcher combines literature review of eminent scholars who have studied the religious and socio-cultural life of the people of Ghana and Lesotho in particular and Africa in general, with personal field study through dissemination of questionnaires, interviews and personal observations. Through this approach he finds out the various religious phenomena that reveal the concept of the divine in the two countries concerned and in other African countries through comparison of their worships and socio-cultural activities in order to come out with the differences and the similarities that may call for synthesis of the concept in Africa. He also finds out how the concept of the divine in Africa has been influenced by foreign religions and culture particularly Christianity, Islam, Western culture and Education. And how their services and disservices have affected the concept of the divine in Africa. The researcher also looks at the issue of monotheism as against polytheism in African religious perspective to find out whether the African Traditional Religions are polytheistic, monotheistic or monolatry. The study reveals that the concept of the divine, in the two countries under study, ends up in one Supreme deity-God- .but that the approach to the concept is not always the same. There are some differences and similarities, which also prevail in other African Traditional Religions and in Christianity. There is also a look into whether the term "African Traditional Religions" is appropriate for the religious belief and practices found in Africa, and whether a synthesis of religious practices in Africa would be possible in future. In the final analysis the study reveals that the African concept of the divine as pertains in the two countries is not different from that of Christianity and Islam but that the approach to the concept differs due to differences in the perception of the divine through sociocultural and religious milieus.
Religious Studies & Arabic
D. Litt. et Phil. (Religious Studies)

Earlier scholars of religion argued that Africans were animists and polytheists who didn't have the concept of a supreme being because they did not see clearly the distinction between the supreme being and divinities. It's recent that indigenous scholars disputed this and redefined the relationship as ‘diffused monotheism'. God seemed to be remote to the Africans' daily affairs of life, and African culture of respect and honor had a role in this. The authors attempt to present a reality of an accurate outlook of the obscure yet clear religious ontology of God, divinities, and spirits in the African indigenous religion. Durkheim asserted religion divided society into two categories, the profane and the sacred; nevertheless, in the African religious ontology, the two are intermixed in everyday experiences. On the flip-side, to overlook the concept of spirit being in the African worldview is to proscribe an African religious belief system.

This chapter discusses the popular methods of African American scriptural interpretation that formed the early religious context that Duke Ellington represented through his jazz artistry. In these biblical interpretations, African American Protestants in the twentieth century’s early decades read the Hebrew and Christian scriptures in concert with constructing their own history as descendants of the African continent. Ellington brought into his musical profession a relationship to the Bible as a sacred African document that portrayed African and black people as the great founders of ancient civilizations and as contributors to the foundation of modern civilization. By publishing and promoting books on history and biblical interpretation, writing editorials, answering reader questions in regular black press columns, staging pageants, and even through long- and short-form jazz compositions, middle-class black Protestants, along with black academics who studied ancient North Africa, the Near East, and East Africa, invested their intellectual and artistic energy into racializing sacred Hebrew figures and sacralizing non-Hebrew peoples as venerable contributors to the development of religion. These Afro-Protestant racializations of sacred texts and ancient religions, alongside their sacralizations of African identity, involved their embrace of both monotheisms and polytheisms.

Religious economies are a novel idea with potential application in a free market economy. They bring the idea of the existence of the supernatural and concern with ultimate meanings, so ubiquitous to religions, in touch with the multiplicity of paths available to us. In Islamic Sufism, there are as many paths to God as there are individuals. A situation in which people could compare and evaluate religions, regarding them as a matter of choice, can best described as a religious economy. Just as commercial economies consist of a market in which different firms compete, religious economies consist of a market (the aggregate demand for religion) and firms (different religious organizations) seeking to attract and hold clienteles. Just as commercial economies must deal with state regulations, religious economies' key issue is the degree to which they are regulated by the state. From Stark's viewpoint, the natural state of a religious economy is religious pluralism, wherein many religious “firms” exist because of their special appeal to certain segments of the market or the population. However, just as there is incentive for a commercial organization to monopolize the market to maximize its profit, it is always in the interest of any particular religious organization to secure a monopoly, maintain its followers, and expand into new interest groups. This can be achieved, (and even then to a very limited extent) only if the state forcibly excludes competing faiths (Stark, 2001). The building blocks of Stark's ideas are the assumption of a free market, a market economy, and the key issue of rational choice theory, hand in hand with American Pragmatism. As with the history of religions, which are not and have not been free from contest and cooperation, similarities, and differences, so religious economies have not been and are not easily shaped without considering forces from within and among different economies. Religious actions, reactions, and interactions in monotheism, diversity of textual interpretations, the growth of intellectualism or counter-intellectualism, human perception of transcendence and the sacred, as well as the realities of everyday life, all imply that the idea of religious economies needs more exploration. Christianity and Islam, one dominating the West and the other the East and Africa, offer the instances of two massive markets. Each religion has more than a billion adherents and a history of sharing the monotheistic market. Both religions, in spite of Islamophobia in the West, have formed and will participate in the decline, incline, or stability of the market. This subject is timely in light of the political movements in the Middle East and monolithic misconception of Islam.

Religious economies are a novel idea with potential application in a free market economy. They bring the idea of the existence of the supernatural and concern with ultimate meanings, so ubiquitous to religions, in touch with the multiplicity of paths available to us. In Islamic Sufism, there are as many paths to God as there are individuals. A situation in which people could compare and evaluate religions, regarding them as a matter of choice, can best described as a religious economy. Just as commercial economies consist of a market in which different firms compete, religious economies consist of a market (the aggregate demand for religion) and firms (different religious organizations) seeking to attract and hold clienteles. Just as commercial economies must deal with state regulations, religious economies' key issue is the degree to which they are regulated by the state. From Stark's viewpoint, the natural state of a religious economy is religious pluralism, wherein many religious “firms” exist because of their special appeal to certain segments of the market or the population. However, just as there is incentive for a commercial organization to monopolize the market to maximize its profit, it is always in the interest of any particular religious organization to secure a monopoly, maintain its followers, and expand into new interest groups. This can be achieved, (and even then to a very limited extent) only if the state forcibly excludes competing faiths (Stark, 2001). The building blocks of Stark's ideas are the assumption of a free market, a market economy, and the key issue of rational choice theory, hand in hand with American Pragmatism. As with the history of religions, which are not and have not been free from contest and cooperation, similarities, and differences, so religious economies have not been and are not easily shaped without considering forces from within and among different economies. Religious actions, reactions, and interactions in monotheism, diversity of textual interpretations, the growth of intellectualism or counter-intellectualism, human perception of transcendence and the sacred, as well as the realities of everyday life, all imply that the idea of religious economies needs more exploration. Christianity and Islam, one dominating the West and the other the East and Africa, offer the instances of two massive markets. Each religion has more than a billion adherents and a history of sharing the monotheistic market. Both religions, in spite of Islamophobia in the West, have formed and will participate in the decline, incline, or stability of the market. This subject is timely in light of the political movements in the Middle East and monolithic misconception of Islam.