A religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence. Many religions have narratives, symbols, and sacred histories that are intended to explain the meaning of life and/or to explain the origin of life or the Universe. From their beliefs about the cosmos and human nature, people derive morality, ethics, religious laws or a preferred lifestyle. According to some estimates, there are roughly 4,200 religions in the world.Many religions may have organized behaviours, clergy, a definition of what constitutes adherence or membership, holy places, and scriptures. The practice of a religion may also include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration of a deity, gods or goddess-es, sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trance, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service or other aspects of hu-man culture. Religions may also contain mythology

There are numerous definitions of religion and only a few are stated here. The typical dic-

tionary definition of religion refers to a “belief in, or the worship of, a god

or gods” or the “service and wor-ship of God or the supernatural”. However, writers and scholars have expanded upon the “be-lief in god” definitions as insufficient to capture the diversity of religious thought and experience.

It is against the law to discriminate against you because of your religion or belief. This ap-plies, at work, in education, in housing.

Religious dis-crimination is valuing or treat-ing a person or group different-ly because of what they do or do not believe. Specifical-ly, it is when ad-herents of different religions (or denom-inations) are treated unequally, either be-fore the law or in in-stitutional settings such as employment or housing.

Religious discrimination is related to religious persecu-tion, the most extreme forms of which would include instances in which people have been executed for beliefs perceived to be heretic. Laws which only carry light punishments are described as mild forms of religious per-secution or as religious discrimination.

Even in societies where freedom of religion is a constitutional right, sometimes adherents of religious minorities voice concerns about religious discrimination against them. Insofar as legal policies are concerned, casethat are perceived as religious discrimination might be the result of an interference of the religious sphere with other spheres of the public that are regulated by law (and not aimed specifically against a religious minority).

Racial discrimination is when a person is treated less favourably than an-other person in a simi-lar situation because of their race, colour, descent, national or ethnic origin or immi-grant status.For example, it would be ‘direct discrim-ination’ if a real estate agent refus-

es to rent a house to a person because they are

of a particular racial back-ground or skin colour.It is also racial discrimination

when there is a rule or policy that is the same for everyone but has an

unfair effect on people of a particu-lar race, colour, descent, national or ethnic origin or immigrant status.This is called ‘indirect discrimi-nation’.For example, it may be in-direct racial discrimination if a company says that employees must

not wear hats or other head-wear at work, as this

is likely to have an unfair effect on peo-ple from some racial/ethnic backgrounds.

Racism con-

sists of both prejudice and discrimination based in social perceptions of biological dif-ferences between peoples. It of-ten takes the form of social actions, practices or beliefs, or political systems that consider different races to be ranked as inherently superi-or or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities. It may also hold that members of different races should be treated differently.

Among the questions about how to define rac-ism are the question of whether to include forms of discrimination that are unin-tentional, such as making assumptions about preferences or abilities of others based on racial stere-otypes, whether to include symbolic or institution-alized forms of dis-crimination such as the circulation of eth-nic stereotypes through the media, and whether to include the socio-political dynamics of social stratifi-cation that sometimes have a racial component.