Relationship Between Art and Religion: Based on The Views of Christianity, the Enlightenment and Islam

The purpose of this study is to explain and analyze the relationship between art and religion based on the views of Christianity, the Enlightenment (Kant) and the religion of Islam.

The research method is descriptive and analytical, deductive and comparative inference. For this purpose, first the views of Christianity and the Enlightenment period are explained and analyzed according to Kant's view on the relationship between art and religion, and then the relationship between art and religion in the perspective of Islamic aesthetics is introduced as an alternative theory. The main question of the research is what is the relationship between art and religion in the view of Christianity, the view of Kant's Enlightenment and the view of Islam?

Findings showed that the religion of Islam has dealt with art and religion in a different and coherent way compared to the two competing views, and has based art and religion on monotheistic principles from the aesthetic point of view.

The authors of the research conclude that in the christian approach, the separation between art and religion can be imagined as "art exclusivism". The enlightenment view, especially Kant's view, recognizes the value of art in the pleasure it derives, and only the connection between religion and art in moral religion is significant. In islamic aesthetics, art is not independent of religion under any circumstances. In the christian approach, the independence of art from other scientific realms is clearly seen, but in the Islamic approach, art is tied to divine monotheism and the teachings of the Qur'an. Accordingly, the theory of Islamic aesthetics is coherent and as an alternative theory is more accurate than the other two theories.