Religiosity and Spirituality

Today, I had a discussion with one of my lecturers, and this lecturer has a pretty strong stand for the focus of religion in professional social work practice. He has made a lot of points that have their merits and his argument that social work practitioners nowadays might have abandoned the aspect of religion that might be a key to an effective intervention. But there is one statement that he said that made me want to argue back, "If people have a strong religious routine (e.g. going to the mosque/church, making a prayers, etc.) in his life, would he have all the problem that social workers have to deal with nowadays like homelessness and poverty?" That was when I thought that he might have become a little bit simplistic.

I cannot deny the importance of religion, and personally religion is important in my life. But growing up, we know that life is not that simple. Life is not a fairy tale where good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Simply, life is not a fairy tale. I believe that being a professional practitioner in any field, one must know that a human's life is the result of multiple factors, and attempting to pin down events of an individual's life on a single cause might be a little bit too naive. Juvenile delinquency is a perfect example. Some "religious" people argue that if these youths have a strong religion, they would not resort to such lifestyle. Well, now answer this, why are there still some young people who come from religious family and still turn to be delinquents? This is because factors of juvenile delinquency is so many that I'm sure some of them have not been studied yet by researchers in this field.

This is when I would like to point out that there is a distinction between religiosity and spirituality. For me, religion is a source of spirituality, but it's not the only one. Have you seen some atheists that might be a better person than some people who claim to be religious? Yeah, that is because they have a stronger and better spiritual self. I would like to define religiosity as a way people have a relationship with a greater power who they depend on for strength and serenity, while spirituality is the faith, strength, and serenity that one has. So, in a way, spirituality is a result of religion, and it can be a result of multiple other things, like gratefulness, temporal happiness, or positive view on life.

Religion is, no doubt, one of the strongest source of spirituality which can help in overcoming life's challenges, but sadly religion has been a justification to some unfortunate things, and this is where we can see that religion is actually a tool, rather than a result. Events like terrorism, racism, ethnocentrism, discrimination and some other show us that some people could abuse the privilege of having a religion.

So, for me, you make a prayer to be stronger when you are facing a difficulty, NOT to miraculously and suddenly get out of your problem. The second one is why some people always blame religion when nothing good happens to them. This is because they don't understand that while we have pray, Islam, and I'm sure other religion too, urge us to make efforts and have tawakkal (surrender) for it. Sitting and praying all the time does not count as efforts, it is laziness. After all, who says that only prayers are ibadah (a religious act)? Islam has said that doing good things such as feeding your family, gaining knowledge, eating, doing sports, etc. can also be ibadah.

So, I am calling all of you, and me because sometimes I forget too, to never abuse the definition of religion that we have. Religion is only beneficial to you when you know how to embrace it in your life, but saying, "Oh, Islam asks me to do this..." when you want to go to a mosque for a month, leaving your family behind starving and penniless until your family is a suitable target for a welfare service in JKM, and your son rebels by using drugs, then, this might seem very religious, but this is not spiritual, this is not a good Muslim at all, or a Christian, or from any other religion.

Be moderate, as Mufti Ismail Menk said in a Fiqh Convention I attended earlier this year. Be religious, be spiritual, also consider worldly affairs in your life.