1. Religion is opinions and actions, determined and restricted with stipulations and prescribed for a community by their first ruler, who seeks to obtain through their practicing it a specific purpose with respect to them or by means of them.
The community may be a tribe, a city or district, a great nation, or many nations.
If the first ruler is virtuous and his rulership truly virtuous, then in what he prescribes he seeks only to obtain, for himself and for everyone under his rulership, the ultimate happiness that is truly happiness; and that religion will be virtuous religion.--Al-Farabi Book of Religion translated by Butterworth.
Al-Farabi's definition of religion makes clear that it is a means not an end. The purpose of religion is to promote true happiness or (as I prefer) flourishing. When it does so, I'll call it true religion. The skill in so doing is the political or kingly craft (14b-c). The text is a bit ambiguous if this true flourishing can be genuinely achieved in the virtuous city or only in the afterlife (cf. 2). My reading, but I don't feel entirely confident about this, is that the opinion that is taught is indeed that true happiness is only attainable in the afterlife, whereas it's possible that from the point of reason the best available flourishing is to be found in the virtuous city alone.
The first ruler is the person who solves what I call "the transition problem," that is [recall here and here] how to how to create the best political organization with a population raised under bad institutions (or worse, that is, bad breeding). So, it turns out that true religion really serves two purposes: (a) generate flourishing for members of the just/virtuous polity and (b) move us from a misguided status quo to an optimal political outcome. (So, in time (b) precedes (a).)
The content of true religion taught to the population is itself true (so no Noble Lies), but it is not taught as knowledge (hence the "opinions"). Al-Farabi does not envision teaching philosophy (which supplies there are proofs of the opinions taught) to the masses, but as it turns out he thinks that bits of philosophy are a precondition to the political or kingly craft (18). In the Book of Religion, this King need not be a philosopher-king (although as I noted before elsewhere, In the Political Regime, Al-Farabi does seem to insist that they be joined). The content includes rituals and outward signs (behavior) as well as doctrines (opinions) . It is notable that it does not need to include a distinct institution (or Church), although it may do so. That is to say, Al-Farabi's true religion includes what we would call civic religion.
It is entirely compatible with Al-Farabi's definition that more than one religion can solve the transition problem and help generate flourishing. For, as we have seen, Al-Farabi is a pluralist about true religion. By this I do not mean that any polity (be it a tribe, village, state, empire, etc.) can have multiple true religions. For, the point of such a religion is to turn a "multiplicity" into a (harmonious) "unity" (20). Rather, there may be different ways of solving the transition problem at different times and places. To put it in terms of Socratic (ideal) political theory, there are many ways in which the true polity may be instantiated depending on local circumstances. I do not mean to suggest that anything goes in true religion. It's very clear that Farabi thinks there are constraints on the opinions taught (of the sort that are familiar from Spinoza's dogma's of the true religion) and practices proscribed. These constraints are connected to what can be proven by philosophy, and [connected to the political craft] must be compatible with a prudence cultivated on daily practice and historical experience.
I have distinguished between the two political roles (a-b ) of religion in the transition problem [recall (a) is generate flourishing for members of the just/virtuous polity and in (b) religion move us from a misguided status quo to an optimal political outcome] because as my students noted, the Book of Religion is a bit ambiguous on the role of revelation. It's clear that some elements of true religion are the product of revelation. But the text is ambiguous when such revelation occurs. In fact, one of the clearest statements on this point suggests that revelation (with a nod to Quran 26:193, by way of the Trustworthy spirit or Archangel Gabriel) only occurs after the establishment of the virtuous city (see, especially, 26). So, it looks as if Al-Farabi makes a clear conceptual distinction between bringing about the virtuous city and ensuring that its citizens flourish.* One cannot help noting that the occurrence of revelation seems skewed toward (some of) the politically successful.
This, in turn, may well also divide between (b*) maintaining a just city, and (b**) ensuring that the citizens flourish in this world and the afterworld.
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