In certain approaches within contemporary philosophy of religion, religious experience is regarded not merely as one of the domains in which faith is realized, but as the very criterion of the authenticity and validity of religion. This conception shifts the criterion of religion from truth, authoritative proof (ḥujjiyyah), and shared authority to individual lived experience, thereby confronting the relation between individual religion and the community of faith with an epistemological challenge. The present study, employing an analytical-critical method, examines the experience-centered formulation of religion in modern theology and philosophy of religion, and assesses its relation to truth, reason, revelation, and religious authority. The finding of the research is that elevating experience from the level of the realization of faith to that of the ultimate criterion of religion's validity undermines the possibility of epistemic adjudication among rival interpretations, and paves the way for the privatization of religion, the erosion of shared authority, and the disintegration of the community of faith. The novelty of the article lies in explaining the individualization and privatization of religion as consequences of an epistemological shift, rather than as merely sociological phenomena. In contrast, the Islamic model of the authenticity of religion does not negate religious experience; rather, it renders it meaningful within a hierarchical (longitudinal) relation to revelation, reason, the interpretive tradition, and the community of believers (ummah). Accordingly, the authenticity of religion is grounded neither in solitary experience nor in the social institution alone, but in the interconnection of revealed truth, shared rationality, the existential realization of faith, and the collective life of the faithful.