Something to visualize and to ponder on is the fact that the prophets and messengers of The Almighty were all men who called people to the faith of peace with The Lord and with the striving for this, peace with many of His creation (except those who choose to be hostile), the people simply either accepted or rejected the faith. After the prophet or messenger were gone, others grabbed some chairs and set themselves up as councils, usually with the aproval and even support of the government (which usually was headed by a king or tribal leader) and  wrote volumes of books and claimed no one can understand "the religion" -what in reality is a simpel faith which can be understood by even the person who has been endowed with the least IQ by The Creator-,  except if they adhere to their taught way, and if a person does not settle for blind obedience to their words and has questions or doubts  he can go and study their volumes of books under their guidance, and when the new student completely adheres to their doctrines and methodology they declare him a scholar, give him a paper stating his scholarship and send him somewhere to do the same as is done to him to others, this all can only happen ofcourse if they see the questioner as fit for their indoctrination, in other words he must be liked by them, otherwise they just put a label on him which makes him an outcast or even label him a herretic if his claims become too threatening.... Institutionalized religion has not been the way of the prophets, nor of the last prophet Muhammad who was illiterate...it is really kind of ironic that the arab prophet was an illiterate man explaining the (simpel) faith and calling to it with such success and that now we have scholars of "islam", who are supposed to be the inherritors of the prophet (in knowledge of the faith) have desks and hundreds, even thousands of books all claimed essential to fully understand the religion...ironic.