Religion Versus Womankind

1. The Dominance of Men in Traditional Religions
2. Modern Hope: Secular Society and New Religions
3. Islam and Women (Qur'an 4:34 and more)
4. Conclusions

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1. The Dominance of Men in Traditional Religions

Most religious traditions have subjugated womankind. They have been barred from any leadership, prevented from religious learning or even secular education, and forbidden to hold power, or sometimes even to speak. As we will see, even central Buddhism has had difficulties with accepting any equality of womankind. The scholar of comparative religion, Moojan Momen, summarizes the situation in an uncharacteristically critical manner:

“Religion has been an important source of laws and administrative structures that kept women in an inferior position in society. In Hindu law, Rabbinic law, Christian canon law and the Islamic Shari'a, the testimony of a woman is either worthless or given less weight that that of a man. Indeed, in many societies, women have been relegated to a position of virtual slavery. They have no rights or freedoms by custom or in law. Throughout their lives they are completely dependent on males. A quotation from the Hindu book, the Laws of Manu, sums up the reality of the situation for most women in almost every society: 'In childhood, a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead, to her sons; a woman must never be independent.'

While of course, religion is not the sole factor responsible for the suppression of women, it is nevertheless true that this social subjugation is underpinned by the authority of religion. Since religion is the source for the values and morality of a traditional society, religion's doctrinal and moral attitude to women fashions the social milieu that justifies their subjugation. In addition, whether we consider suttee in India, clitoridectomy in Muslim North Africa or the witch-hunts of Europe and North America, it has been religious traditions that have sanctioned and given moral authority to violence towards women. [...]

Women have been excluded from religious learning. Women are forbidden to read and study the Vedas in classical Hinduism and the Talmud in Orthodox Judaism. In the United States, women were excluded from Christian theological faculties and seminaries until the middle of the nineteenth century. The religious hierarchy in most religions is male-dominated. Whether Hindu Brahmin priests, Buddhist monks, Zoroastrian mobeds, Jewish rabbis, Christian priests or Muslim ulema are considered, all are exclusively or predominantly male preserves. Even in Buddhism, where Buddha himself gave permission for the setting up of an order of nuns, the Buddhist scriptures represent him as having been very reluctant to do so [...three times] saying, 'If women go forth under the rule of the Dharma, this Dharma will not be long-enduring.' He said that it would be like a blight descending upon a field of sugar cane. Eventually he relented, however, and allowed an order of nuns. However, the nuns were to remain subordinate to the monks in all ways.”

"The Phenomenon Of Religion: A Thematic Approach" by Moojan Momen (1999) [Book Review]₁

In general, the traditional patriarchal religions are more misogynistic and although in developed countries these religions have somewhat weakened, this isn't just a historical battle. Immigrant communities in the West continue practices endorsed by their home religions - "some estimates suggest that 90 percent of European Muslim wives are physically abused"₂. Sexism and women's rights are regularly reported on by secular human rights bodies such as Amnesty International, which finds itself criticizing religious institutions. Amnesty International's 2009 compendium of horrors, "The State of the World's Human Rights", devotes some space to women's rights, including tales of torture and oppression, and compared (as always) the statistics to previous years. "In Iran and many other countries, Amnesty detected a retreat in women's rights, often in the name of religion. [... But] it is not just Muslim theocracies that Amnesty blame for maltreating women" as their stance on equality and women's rights has also brought them into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church₃.

Pagan and Earth-centered religions not only to treat women equally, but sometimes are dominated by women. When Christianity was still mostly the same as paganism, it treated women equally. Brutal Pauline Tertullian Christianity eradicated this tolerance₅ and also gave us modern Christianity. Partially as a backlash against immorality and oppression, Protestantism was a partial return to the more liberal, pagan, ways of Christianity's past. The feminist movement was "pathetically weak" even as late as the First World War, and it only flourished in Protestant environments₄.

The struggle for emancipation in areas historically dominated by patriarchal religions is not just a matter of political correctness or liberalism. The prevalence of rape is, for example, directly correlated with the strict religiosity. In a summary of research on rape Hollin (1989) lists the three main social factors in 'rape cultures': "the sexes are clearly separated; there is a general subscription to male dominance; male violence is sanctioned for solving personal problems"₆ and notes that symptoms are men taking priority in work, family and sex. Although Hollin does not mention religion, most of these symptoms are clearly associated with traditional religions, and not just Abrahamic ones: Buddhist monasteries are nearly always separated along lines of gender, with the male communities in charge of the female ones and Buddhism from the outset encoded misogyny. Aside from rape, amongst Christians "the probability of wife abuse increases with the rigidity of a church's teachings pertaining to gender roles and hierarchy"₇. The approach of traditional religions to womankind in general causes much social malaise.

Although there has been much progress in the elimination of gender bias Bryan Wilson comments that even in developed Western countries Christian churches have remained behind secular society₈, which has thankfully now come to accept the equality of women both formally and on the ground. Victor Stenger writes in "God, the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist" that monotheism's attitude towards women is an indicator that believing in God does not increase one's morality₉.

2. Modern Hope: Secular Society and New Religions

Secular society has made massive progress and in most developed countries, there are few areas where women are routinely discriminated against. Where it exists, discrimination in workplaces is largely indirect and accidental. This is because the masses have largely grown beyond any systematic subjugation of women: any prejudice that remains is widely recognized as prejudice. In a recent talk at the Women Worldwide Advancing Freedom & Equality event, the invited speaker Naomi Phillips spoke on women's reproductive rights and said that although secularism doesn't guarantee fair rights for women, it is still a necessary prerequisite simply because of the limiting harm that religion has so far done; the biggest threat to such rights still come from strict religion-based lobby groups.₁₀

New religions are unlike traditional religions which have tended to be horribly misogynistic. Modern Pagan and Wiccan religions are actively pro-women₁₁. They were founded (in the twentieth century) on a conscious policy of inclusion and fairness₁₁. The same century saw the rise of Satanism. You might assume it to be no place to look for good examples but although in the 1960s Anton LaVey, its founder, sounded misogynistic in his more personal writings, The Satanic Witch (1970) was a highly progressive and liberal volume for its time. Since then, the Church of Satan has thoroughly shed any gender bias, and a female high priestess followed on from LaVey.

3. Islam and Women (Qur'an 4:34 and more)

Islam has oppressed women more than any other force in history. Although Christianity was once the greater oppressor, where women were forbidden to preach and learn, and were subject to their husbands' rule, the restrictions under Islam are much worse and enforced much more strictly. There are many barbaric practices associated with Islam that negatively effect women, such as female segregation, female genital mutilation (FGM: which removes the clitoris in order to prevent women wanting to cheat), multiple wives, male ownership and domination of women, restrictions on work and education of women, honour killings and forced marriages. Some of those, such as FGM, are nothing to do with Islam and occur in only some Islamic countries, and predate Islam. Although in its day Islam granted some rights to women that they did not otherwise have, the unfortunate side-effect is that women's rights have been frozen at a partial state in Islamic countries. Almost half of all women in Muslim lands are illiterate. No matter to what extent misogynistic and patriarchal brutality have been cultural rather than Islamic, in Muslim lands women's rights have remained severely restricted because the religion does not promote women's rights apart from a few specifics. Even in places like New York City, far removed from Arabic culture, Mosques refuse to let a woman speak an address.

Much of the negative doctrine about women comes from the Qur'an and the canonical hadiths which record Muhammad's sayings. Suras 24:30-31 and 33:59, and hadiths 4092 and 4092 of Abu-Dawud, instruct that women must dress modestly, completely covered, with only hands and face showing. Sura 4:34 states clearly that men have authority over women, and can beat disobedient women. Recorded hadiths confirm that men can beat their women, and that the women who complain about it are reprehensible (Abu-Dawud 2141,2142); rates of wifebeating are very high in Muslim countries, according to Pakistan's own medical institute the rate there is 90%. The hadiths have Muhammad preach that women are inferior intellectually and religiously (Sahih al-Bukhari 6:301, Sahih Muslim 1:142). Sahih al-Bukhari 59:709 states that a nation ruled by a woman will not be successful. Muhammad's most beloved wife Aisha says that men have such rights over women, that if women understood, they would happily wipe the dust from their husband's feet with their faces. Women's testimony is worth less than a man's, and women inherit less. The Qur'an is addressed to males and the text assumes that males are reading it, males are enforcing the rules, and women are subordinate (i.e. Sura 4:15-6). Wives are given permission to do things by their men; never the other way round. Hadiths 3367 and 3368 in Sahih Muslim record that God is only happy with a woman if her husband is happy with her, and, if he calls her to bed for sex, she should comply. The language in the Qur'an is objectifying and talks of women in terms of ownership. Sura 2:225 says that "women are fields: go, then, into your fields whence you please". The influence of the Qur'an and the Hadiths, and the entire religion of Islam and all of the countries where it is dominant, have in total formed a system of thorough male dominance and the systematic abuse of womankind. It is rooted in the core of the religion. Like the Christians, Muslims must learn to ignore and overlook the misogynistic verses in their holy text. Until they do that, Islam will remain an enemy of women.

4. Conclusions

It seems that there is little that can be done to remove matriphobic commentary from the texts of the traditional world religions; societies must come to either ignore the texts (as most Christians do) or abandon religion (as many Westerners have done). New religions have tended to practice and enshrine gender equality, such as Paganism, Satanism and Wicca. Feminist groups have frequently been anti-religion, simply because it is religion that has presented itself as one of the biggest oppressors of womankind. The most readily accepted cure for both intolerance, religion and superstition is widely shown to be education.