Wilfred Cantwell Smith, OC FRSC[15] (July 21, 1916 – February 7, 2000) was a Canadian Islamicist, comparative religion scholar,[16] and Presbyterian minister.
[6] Smith studied at University College, Toronto,[22] receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree with honours in oriental languages circa 1938.
[23] After his thesis was rejected by the University of Cambridge,[24] supposedly for its Marxist critique of the British Raj, he and his wife Muriel Mackenzie Struthers spent seven years in pre-independence India (1940–1946), during which he taught Indian and Islamic history at Forman Christian College in Lahore.
Smith proposed replacing the static concept of religion with a dynamic dialectic between "cumulative tradition" (all historically observable rituals, art, music, theologies, etc.)
He also highlighted that the Arabic language does not have a word for religion equivalent to the European concept, detailing how din, usually translated as such, differs significantly.
Through an etymological study, Smith argued that "religion" originally denoted personal piety but evolved to mean a system of observances or beliefs, a shift institutionalized through reification.
During the 17th-century Catholic-Protestant debates, religion began to refer to abstract systems of beliefs, a concept further reified during the Enlightenment, exemplified by G.W.F.