© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657790258_006 Religion, dīn, and Islam: A Complex Web Rüdiger Lohlker Abstract Thinking about religion is confronted with several problems. Is religion a term to be applied in every religious tradition? Are there other concepts used as an equivalent for religion? Is the meaning of the terminology used transhistorical or not? The contribu- tion argues that in Arabic there is a term dīn indicating a complex and ambiguous meaning before modernity and adapting to the all-encompassing meaning of religion influenced by the colonial domination of meaning at a global level. Keywords religion; dīn; Islam; decolonial 1 Introduction Religion is often translated by the Arabic expression1 dīn. Thus, a thorough look into this lexical field is needed. Our reflections are based on the most compre- hensive Arabic national dictionary, the Tāǧ al-ʿarūs f ī ǧawāhir al-Qāmūs (roughly translated: “The Bride’s Crown from the Pearls of [the dictionary] al-Qāmūs”).2 The title is referring to an earlier lexicon it is commenting upon and enlarging. The author is al-Murtaḍā al-Ḥusainī al-Zabīdī,3 one of the most important schol- ars of early modern times in the Arab world. The lexicon moves far beyond the confines of the genre. Reichmuth writes in his seminal study on the author: the genre of the lexicon; embodied by Zabīdī both as a commentary to another lexicon and a fusion of material derived from many others, is stretched almost beyond its limits. The diversity of added materials from many disciplines, virtu- ally overwhelming this commentary shows the encyclopedic outlook of its author4 1 Cf. the concepts of Arabic lexicographers, i.e., lafẓ, vocal form, and maʿnā, mental content. Cf., e.g., Key, Language. 2 Cf. al-Zabīdī, Tāj. 3 Born 1732 CE in Bilgrām, today in Uttar Pradesh, d. 1790 CE in Cairo as a result of the pest. His surname is derived from the Yemeni city of Zabīd, a center of learning in early modernity. Cf. for him the magisterial study Reichmuth, The World. 4 Reichmuth, The World, p. 93. Rüdiger Lohlker - 9783657790258 Heruntergeladen von Brill.com 10/18/2024 12:31:48PM via Vienna University Library