The problem with Islam & misogyny, as I see it

[Coventina]

This post was inspired by my thoughts on the LBN thread regarding the rape victim who got 101 lashes.

Let me start off by saying that the Abrahamic tradition is deeply misogynistic, and therefore, all three of the family religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have a misogynistic tradition that they draw from. I'm not giving any one of the three a pass on this.

Having said that, I've been doing some speculating on the current situation that seems to be somewhat problemmatic in *some* (not all) Islamic countries in regards to the treatment of women & girls.

Now, it strikes me as significant that the flagship country, the "Holy Land" of Islam, Saudi Arabia could be a big part of the problem. The treatment of women there is downright barbaric. I mean, shoving girls into a burning building because they are not properly covered? I could go on at length with other examples, but we're all pretty familiar with them, I think.

It seems to me that the KSA, by the sacred position it holds in the Islamic world, also sets an example to the rest of the Islamic world.

Let me again stress that this does not mean that the rest of the Islamic world follows its example, but I think that it does have influence. How could it not?

I know that there are other factors such as culture, tribalism, etc. I don't mean to downplay those. But it just strikes me that when you have the Holy Land treating women and girls as less than human, that many others will follow suit.

This is not intended to be an inflammatory post, but it seems that any post about Islam can be considered as inflammatory these days. So let me conclude by once again stating that IMO: the whole Abrahamic tradition is rife with misogyny, not just Islam.

If you've made it down to here, thanks for reading.

[timeforpeace]

1. You lost me when you equated Judaism and Christianity with 101 lashes by Islamists. Find examples in

those two former religions and I'll consider your attempt at moral equivalence. Until then, your almost fearful presentation of Islam criticism says much, don't you think?

[Warpy]

4. Magdalene Laundries

100 lashes would be far easier to take than a lifetime spent in slavery.

[Coventina]

5. That's not what meant, and I apologize for being unclear

I in NO WAY equate what is going on, currently, with Judaism and Christianity with what is going on with Islam.

The point I was trying to make is that all three have a misogynistic tradition and Judaism and Christianity have a deeply misogynistic history. Even today, there is mistreatment of women in fundamentalist practices of both faiths. However, they are in the tiny minority, and also not enshrined in any kind of governmental law.

But certainly, I never meant to equate the treatment of women in Italy (the home of the Roman Catholic faith) and Israel to the status of women in KSA. If that's the way it came across, I apologize for sloppy writing.

But I will plead guilty to your second accusation: I am fearful of criticizing Islam, because doing so inevitably gets you labeled as a hater, at least by some.

Something tells me I'm going to be sorry for posting this thread. I just had some ideas I wanted to share, but it was probably a mistake.

[Retrograde]

26. It was clear to me

While all three have changed over time, they do share a common core value that women are less than men. This is mitigated to some extent in the more liberal versions of all three, but the fundamentalists versions, however nicely they may treat women, still don't give them the same privileges as men have.

[katandmoon]

9. Salem witch trials ring a bell?

[apocalypsehow]

15. 1692 ring a bell? Find us a 2010 Christian/Jewish equivalent to the 100 lashes going on NOW.

Wait for it...wait for it...Crusades...blah, blah, blah, (personal attack-personal attack)...scriptures engraved on rifle scopes....blah, blah, blah...(a round of subject changing & goalpost moving)...prayer in schools...blah, blah, blah....('are you a creationist?' personal attack)...blah, blah, blah...(*tu quoque* logical fallacies galore)....blah, blah, blah....

[Coventina]

18. I never should have started this thread.

WHAT WAS I THINKING!?!?!

I should know better by now that Islam is just too hot a topic to be discussed rationally or politely.

Just let me state again for the record: I did not intend for this to be a critique of all Muslims. I do not think that all, or even most, Muslims are misogynistic. I also know that there are Christian nations that engage in horrible practices. There is no religion that has a perfect record.

I'm not railing against you, apocalypsehow, but your post pointed out to me the foolishness of my OP.

[apocalypsehow]

19. I understand, Coventina. I don't think your OP was foolish, but it draws out a lot of foolishness

on all sides.

What's really irritating is the inability to simply forthrightly condemn the specific outrage the OP was about without getting a hundred "Christianity/Judaism is just as bad and worse!!!!11" posts.

There is also a good deal of intellectual dishonesty afoot in some of these replies, such as pretending that anything happening in New Guinea has anything to do with an official "Christian" court somewhere handing down sentences that order mandatory rapes to go on.

So, I understand your frustration, believe me.

[Douglas Carpenter]

20. there is absolutely nothing bigoted about reporting and condemning any outrage anywhere including in...

the Islamic world. It is unfortunate that these threads attract people (and I certainly don't think Coventina is one of them - she is asking honest questions) jump on these threads to attack, demean and degrade most or all of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims - a very diverse lot of people. Even post which report Muslim leaders denouncing extremism and terrorism, always, always, always attrack those sorts.

I some how don't believe that the unfortunate victim of this outrage would welcome this grave injustice being used by some to degrade and demean either the Islamic faith or the world's 1.3 billion Muslims.

Also, this ruling was not an official court. It was a group of village elders in a poor, remote, backward village. The very official High Court now is calling for action to be taken against those village elders, which I personally think is a very good thing.

[Douglas Carpenter]

14. first of all that ruling was local tribal law and the High Court is now calling for punishment of

those who made this ruling. . The very fact that this story made it into a British right-wing newspaper is because it is an exception - certainly not the rule. This occurred in a poor and remote area, not even in Dhaka, It is may be tribal custom. It may be regional custom. It may be the result of some kind of clan feud; it may be a number of things. But for all that is wrong with Sharia and there is plenty, this specific outrage is not Islamic law.

Village Arbitration
HC order to ensure security of rape victim

The High Court yesterday directed the Brahmanbaria district administration and the Kasba police to ensure security of a girl who was raped and also lashed in a tarditional arbitration, and produce her to the court at 10:30am on February 7.

The court also issued a rule upon the government to explain why it should not be directed to take legal action against the people involved in the incident of arbitration at Khargor village in Kasba on January 17.

http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=123421

As far as a twisted attitude toward women, approximately 40% of the world's child brides are in Hindu India. The most oppressive country in the world toward women is probably Christian Papua New Guinea. According to Amnesty International, 60% of Papua New Guinea men involved have been involved in rape, largely gang rapes. Two thirds of women in Christian Papua New Guinea experience physical violence at the hands of their husbands. In at least one region, it is close to 100 per cent. This is all according to Amnesty International.

Yes, one can find loads and loads of anecdotal evidence to attack the world's 1.3 billion Muslims or even America's 7 million American-Muslims. After all, it would be just as easy to give anecdotal examples of things in Africa, Asia or Latin America that Western sensibilities would find shocking.

As far as mass killing of civilian and other atrocities. Rwanda was and is an overwhelmingly Christian country and lots and lots of priest and nuns were involved. Suicide bombing was invented by the Hindu Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka where both sides engaged in absolutely massive bloodbaths against civilian; mostly Hindu and Buddhist. The Cambodian genocide occurred in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country. If we look back a little bit into the 20th century and we find the genocides of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, The Japanese Imperial Army - none of them Muslim.

It was certainly not a Muslim country that unleashed genocidal war on the people of Viet Nam and the rest of Indo-China; bombing, incinerating and massacring millions of civilians. It was not a Muslim country that sponsored wars in Latin America that caused the deaths of countless tens of thousands.. It was certainly not a Muslim country that unleashed "shock and awe" on the people of Iraq resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths after a decade of crippling sanctions that the United Nations claims already had resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

But it is far more socially acceptable to focus on Muslims and make no mistake; there are people who know that by doing this they are creating the political climate for war and confrontation.

Unfortunately this whole issue is complicated by the reality that many Americans have essentially a cartoonish, if not deeply bigoted picture of the whole Middle East. Some people seem to have the impression that the whole Arab and Islamic world is like a cross between the Taliban and Disney's Aladdin.

That whole view of the Middle East is delusional and simply conforms to a Western fantasy. It is no more a picture of reality then to imagine Africa as a place where savage native cannibals dance around a fire while cooking their white captives. In fact Africa today almost certainly has far more human rights abuses and the treatment of women is almost certainly worse than in the Middle East regardless what religion dominates in whatever country. But this is not the story that some would want to promote.

I have in fact lived in the Middle East approximately half my life and yes, I do know something about. I have seen with my own eyes the changes and the progress that have been astounding over the past decades. I am even vain enough to be grateful that I have at times and in very small ways done what I could to improve things in this part of the world.

Throughout most of the Arab and much of the Muslim world woman compose more than 50% of University students and are rapidly evolving into the majority of the professional class. There is still a long, long way to go even in the most modern part of the Arab and Islamic world - but it is still a far, far cry from how thing were only two decades ago and a farther cry what many Americans imagine.

What if the those who would promote hostility toward the Muslim world succeed in pushing their message of permanent and endless hostility between the West and the world's 1.3 billion Muslim women and men? What kind of future will the world have if the West rejects President Obama's message of reconciliation and embraces instead, a message of permanent and intractable hatred and hostility?

[Threedifferentones]

27. Modern Christian nations like America which have more civilized justice systems

are better precisely because we stopped listening to barbaric Christian fundamentalists. Christianity looks better today than Islam because "western" societies have let secular ideas and secular needs dictate a much greater portion of our societies. The history of Christianity is two thousand years old, and it embraces the Jewish history, which is obviously much longer. Both of those histories contain horrible and frequently violent misogyny up until decades ago, when we became more refined in our sexism. That in no way makes Christianity better than Islam.

[ShortnFiery]

2. It boils down to "quality of life" - when this is GOOD for women and girls, then there are

far fewer incidents of misogyny within that society.

IMNSHO the Christian religion is no LESS patriarchal than that of Islam.

[katandmoon]

10. +1 Christianity has no room to talk.

[proteus_lives]

22. Yeah they do.

Are rape victims being lashed in Christian countries?

[Warpy]

3. Islam, during its golden age, conferred rights on women

that their Christian sisters in Europe didn't get until the last century. However, as the tribal bullshit and Abrahamanic misogyny took over, the Golden Age turned back to barbarism. I don't think there is any reason to doubt that one thing has much to do with the other. Rising status for women generally means the entire culture rises to a higher level.

Just recognize that Islam isn't the problem. Mohammad overturned the tribal conventions that turned half the human race into cattle and taught that the sexes were equal. He was far ahead of his time. Alas, it didn't last.

[ShortnFiery]

6. Thanks for putting it so well ...

What I was trying to type ...

"Rising status for women generally means the entire culture rises to a higher level."

[Coventina]

8. Yes, that has always been puzzling to me, how a "progressive"

religion would revert to a regressive one.

And I would agree that religion, per se, is not probably the ultimate cause. After all, the "scriptures" used by the Jews and Christians have not changed, but their practices have. Same with Islam as well.

Is it all economics, culture, etc., that causes these changes?
How did the Vikings change from being bloodthirsty raiders to (possibly) the most progressive countries on earth? (Denmark, Norway, Sweden)?

[uppityperson]

12. Thank you and Warpy for this subthread.

Economics causes cultural changes, leading to either progression or regression. Mohammad was ahead of his time, but what he taught has now regressed again.

KSA is a tribal community, thrust into modernity due to oil, but still back in what may have made more sense, or not, as small tribes living subsistence lifestyle in a very harsh environment.

As economics change, and communities are able to not have to focus so much on existence, it often seems that cultural changes happen. (am including qualifiers here also, since there is no one Right answer for all)

I do not know what it would take to get KSA to change its views about women, and men. I think that their pull with the Muslim world will decrease as oil runs out, and perhaps other places will become more progressive? I would like to think so, but am not sure.

[HeresyLives]

23. Well, the Arab world got attacked.

Crusaders from the west, and the Ottomans from the east.

In the ensuing trashing of the place, opportunist-extremists arose who said things like 'it's punishment from Allah for not being more religious.'

So they retreated into religion, and their Golden Age died.

[Skidmore]

7. Religous institutions are political constructs.

Throughout history wealth and power in most cultures have been wielded by men. Religious institutions are tools for marshalling power and people and storehouses for wealth. In some cultures those institutions are more firmly entrenched than others and manifestations of mysogyny vary. We are quick to turn a blind eye to the ills of our own culture, and we have many, while faulting the culture of others. It is easier to see the Other than ourselves.

[Chulanowa]

11. It's very much a Saudi problem

Not that it doesn't happen elsewhere, but Saudi Arabia's the big problem. You've got several factors there.

- Extremist Islam. Wahhabism is to Islam what Branch Davidianism was to Christianity. And this is the state religion of Saudi Arabia. It's incredibly violent, super-orthodox, anti-culture, anti-woman, in fact the list of what Wahhabism is for is far shorter than what it's against.

- Tribalism. Saudi Arabia isn't so much a nation as it is a bunch of tribes ruled with an iron fist by a well-armed and internationally-backed tribe. This tribe - that of the Al Saud family - has to maintain is fragile position, and this translates into brutal oppressions against the others. And historically the best way to crush dissent from rival groups is to attack the women.

- Poverty. This ties into the tribalism, but Saudi Arabia's got both huge extremes. You've got people on one hand building solid gold houses for their second cousins on one hand... And on the other you have people who are drinking salt water just to have any kind of water. Desperation transforms easily into hatred and abuse against whoever it's "okay" to abuse... And in a nation as inundated with violent extremism as Saudi Arabia, guess who that is?

Saudi Arabia used to have a lot of influence among the other Arab countries (and next to none among non-Arab Muslim countries). That lasted from 1948 up to 1990 - the sauds letting Americans sit on Arabian soil before moving out to kill other Arabs severely damaged Saudi credibility in most of the Middle East.

This tortured girl was the victim of extremism and desperation. others will be victimized like her until the Sauds and their ultra-fanatic base crumbles. The Sauds aren't far from the guillotine, but getting rid of the second... that's going to be tougher.

[dorkulon]

13. A few points:

1. Misogyny is a quality common to most cultures, so pinning it on Abrahamic religions is selective. All over the world, women have been and are controlled and persecuted. The Far East, Africa...everywhere really. In their feral state, men are aggressive, domineering, and simply bigger than women. If that male desire to control and dominate women found its way into their religious texts, that doesn't make the texts the source of the misogyny, but the other way around.

2. You need to understand that there are different flavors of Islam. Most of the really extreme violence and intolerance you are referring to is specific to a Sunni sect known as Wahabbism. Wahabbi Islam is the official religion of Saudi Arabia, and it was Saudi Wahabbis that funded the crazy madrassas in Afghanistan (These backwards schools produced the Taleban, which means "students"). By contrast, the Sunnis in Jordan or Iraq are quite liberal. Education was mandatory for girls as well as boys in Iraq long before the first American soldier set foot there. Women dressed in western clothes and weren't required to wear any head gear. Saddam was quite an asshole, but a secular asshole.

3. The idea that Saudi Arabia has much influence is a bit naive, like expecting Lutherans to mimic the behavior of Italians, as even Catholics do not do. Islam is as varied in its practice as Christianity, and most Muslims refer to people like bin Laden as "Wahabbi scum."
It may sound patronizing, but the analogy that best describes the state of Islam and the middle east is that it is a few centuries behind the West in terms of its evolution, and the witch-burning era is not over. But most Christians in that day and age were not psycho puritans, and most Muslims today fear their witch-burners far more than anyone else.

4. Religion liberalizes when society liberalizes. It is ignorance, widespread public ignorance and crushing poverty that keeps societies this backwards.

[Coventina]

16. Thanks for this post. It is very important food for thought. n/t

[uppityperson]

17. Thank you for your post also.

[Exultant Democracy]

24. Saying that religion liberlizes when society liberlizes ignores the process that happed

Muslim society was vastly more liberal for a long period of time. In fact when the intellectual predecessor to Wahhabism, Ibn Hanbal, first proposed his ideals they were routinely condemned by the authorities at the time.

It was only after the religious elite the Ulama moved towards wahhabism that the culture moved into it's dark ages.

[Exultant Democracy]

21. Islam was the most progressive of the big 3 for a while, but wahhabism ruined their civilization

much like Christianity ruined the Roman empire.

[ralph m]

25. We wouldn't be having this problem with Islam and Muslims if

the alternative energy policies that started over 30 years ago had been followed through, instead of being scrapped by the REagan Administration to go back to the Oil Economy. The Saudis plough billions of oil dollars into religious education around the world that follows their interpretation of Islam. The growing fundamentalism cannot be separated from all of the dollars that are sent their way to buy their oil. So, the source of the problem comes right back to our doorsteps.

And, that cheap supply of oil from the Middle East is only cheap because the security costs of maintaining the flow is provided by U.S. carrier fleets and bases all over the M.E. which further fuel resentment about foreign occupation. We wouldn't need a footprint in Saudi Arabia or Iraq if it wasn't based on doing the bidding of the oil industry.

Long story short, even a simple question about evaluating the good and bad of religions cannot be separated from political decisions that have been made over the last few decades.

That question about Islamism is a problem for some New ATheists who want to treat all religious liberals and moderates as collaborators with the fundamentalists. It's one thing to deliberately alienate Christian moderates, but if the same approach is applied to the other big religion, it looks pretty obvious that it is a recipe for disaster!