Religious studies: history and main fields

Religious studies is the discipline that studies religions by scholarly and impartial methods rather than from the standpoint of faith; “History of World Religions” is one of its branches. The first written information about religions appears in ancient authors; for example Herodotus (5th century BC) also recorded the beliefs of the peoples he described. In the medieval Islamic world authors such as Abu Rayhan al-Biruni (“The Remains of Past Centuries”, “India”) and Ibn al-Nadim (“Al-Fihrist”, 987) wrote in detail about the beliefs of various peoples. In 19th-century Europe Max Müller (1823–1900) lectured at Oxford and helped shape the comparative study of religion as an academic field. In the Soviet period the field was taught as “scientific atheism”, with a critical assessment of religion; after independence it returned to an impartial scholarly approach, Tashkent Islamic University opened in 1999, and the International Islamic Academy of Uzbekistan was founded by the decree of 16 April 2018. Sociology studies the relationship between religion and society, psychology a person’s religious experience, philosophy general questions such as God, revelation and creation, phenomenology visible aspects such as worship, ritual and symbols, and history of religion the origins and stages of development of religions.