By: Nurul Husna,
Rogers Brubaker wrote quite a lengthy article, still, there is a few ideas that I would like to argue with my personal oppinions.
On his writing he had mentioned that, “Language, after all, is a universal and persuasive medium of social life, while religion is not.” When I read this part of his article, I could not help but to feel annoyed. This is because in my own religion, Islam—we approach it as our fundamentals for our everyday life. However, after much thought I did my own research, and I discovered that Rogers ideas would unquestionably gain a support and a thumb’s up from our earliest sociologist: Durkheim, Weber and Marx.
I found out that even though none of these three men was particularly religious, the power that religion holds over people and societies interested them all. Plus, they also believed that religion is basically an illusion; because culture and location influence religion to such a degree, the idea that religion presents a fundamental truth of existence seemed rather unbelievable to them. In Rogers article he had also stated that, “Language is a persuasive, inescapable medium of social interaction, religion is not.” Here, Durkheim, Weber and Marx had also speculated that, in time, the appeal and influence of religion on the modern mind would lessen.
In my opinion, it is not fair to differentiate religion and language on the degree on how ‘persuasive’ it is towards socializing. According to the dictionary, religion is a particular system of faith and worship while, language is the system of communication used by a particular community or country. On the contrary to what Rogers had said, religion to me is the one that connects all types of language. In hierachy of life, one might put religion as the most important and then comes economics, education, and health. For each of this aspect to be delivered, it is true that it would not be possible