There are other religious phenomena, such as Buddhism and Jainism, which, although lacking an idea of God in terms of reference, do practice a form of respect and reverence of the “sacred divinity,” as a generic element with characteristics much more general than the Christian, Muslim or Judaic “particular gods.”

Maintaining a unitary concept of religion based solely on one’s own experience and excluding other particularities, cannot be other than a form of fundamentalism which violates the most elemental test of religious freedom.

As Max Muller affirmed, “he who knows only one religion knows none,” which would express the idea with complete precision. Durkheim himself explains the key to this phenomenon: ”... religion is a universal phenomenon which appears in all known human societies. ...”