COMMENT
Women's Issues (1) - Introduction
(Reflection - January 2004)

Since September 11, 2001, Muslims and their religion, Islam, have dominated the news.  To keep informed, we have been challenged to learn strange-sounding names of persons and places, to locate exotic countries on our world maps, and to understand customs much different from our own.

We’ve learned much about Muslim women
Before September 11, not everyone was aware that women in many Muslim countries live under a harshly restrictive moral and religious code.  While the degree of strictness varies from country to country, and even within each country, a large number of Muslim women are required to be covered completely when in public, are not allowed to speak out loud outside their homes, and must maintain a subservient position to the men in their family who hold them in charge.  Furthermore, many Muslim women in such countries cannot work outside the home or even go grocery shopping without a male family member escorting them.  What is even more alarming, education for girls is often not allowed.

In Afghanistan, for example, with the ascendancy of the Taliban in the early 1990’s, nearly all women were forced out of their jobs and many were  reduced to poverty.  Little more than a decade ago, 40% of physicians and more than 70% of the teachers in that country were women.  These well-educated professional women were forced to either flee their homeland or stay and risk poverty.  Many of those who did not flee had to beg food for themselves and their children, and since there was never enough to go around due to the harsh rule of the Taliban and the impoverishment of their war-torn land, they fed their children while starving themselves.

All the children suffered.  While girls were prohibited from attending school at all, even boys could not be properly educated because of the lack of teachers.  Quality education became almost non-existent for boys, and only a few secret underground schools, led by brave and dedicated women willing to risk their very lives, were available to girls (Buried Alive! Afghan women under the Taliban by Jan Goodwin, oti online, echonyc.com, p. 8).

Age-old customs
Saudi Arabia is an example of a Muslim country where an extreme religious and moral code has been in effect for centuries.  Muslim women there must be completely covered and silent when in public.  They must walk behind their male family member escort, are not allowed to drive, and when in a vehicle must sit in the back seat.  They are not allowed to have non-Muslim friends.

Some of these restrictions are routinely placed on Western women who work for the Saudi government, as we saw in a recent news report the case of Lt. Col. Martha McSally, United States Air Force combat pilot stationed in Saudi Arabia who was ordered to cover herself from head to toe in the traditional “abaya” whenever she appeared in public with her fellow pilots.  “I have to sit in the back seat at all times, and I must be escorted by a male…who, when questioned, must claim me as his wife,” she said in her interview on CBS 60 Minutes, December, 2002.

Such restrictions have always been in existence in the Muslim community to one degree or another, but the Taliban greatly strengthened their force.  While it must be noted that there are Muslim women who agree with some of the rules of dress and comportment, the majority of them want to be rescued from such harsh and inhumane measures.

The religious heads of individual Muslim communities and the leaders of the Taliban claim to be Allah’s ambassadors, Allah’s judges, and use their holy book, the Koran, as an infallible source for the harsh laws they impose and the authority to enforce them.  However, a number of respected Muslim scholars have spoken out in recent months to assure the Western world that this is factually untrue; they insist and confirm that there is no evidence in the Koran for such harshness against women.  It is claimed that the Taliban and religious heads all over the Muslim world stand on their own faulty interpretations of the Koran and on the unofficial and often disputed oral and written commentaries of past religious leaders.  These have been circulated and intensified in restrictiveness since the time of Muhammed.  It has been pointed out that when those in charge are less educated, their rules and interpretations are more harsh.  It is no surprise, then, that the Taliban, the majority of whom are poor, young, and uneducated, surpass most other Muslim males in their harsh treatment of women.

Purpose of this Study
Muslim traditions and practices afford a valuable analogy when Jewish and Christian traditions and practices are examined. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all spring from Semitic roots and all are based on written instructions and history which their adherents honor as coming from God. In like manner, all three religions also have their own peculiar oral and written commentaries and interpretations which may or may not be found to coincide with the written revelation.

In this short study, we’d like to examine three areas: the practice of modesty, the principle of submission, and the question of silence – in the context of these three Semitic, monotheistic religions.

But, first, let us define extremism, so blatant a characteristic of the Taliban, yet a trait cradled and nurtured, sometimes overtly but more often covertly, in all three religions.  Then we may approach our subject with an honest mind.

Extremism is Universal
It is no secret that a wide spectrum of interpretation of basic beliefs exists within each world religious organization.  The Islamic community is no different; its Taliban represent the most rigid and fundamental branch of all Muslims.  While there are more than a billion Muslims in the world, the Taliban represent only a small minority.  Among the world’s 14 million Jews, only a minority are strict Orthodox.  And among the nearly 2 billion Christians, each denomination similarly has its own particular radical arm, perhaps even several.  For instance, there are Christian ascetics and contemplatives, Roman Catholic monks and nuns, strict Baptists, Mormons, Amish, and so on.  Such “fundamentalists” have common characteristics which we need to identify if we would avoid extremism within our own community.

Worship of rules
The first characteristic of extremism is its rigid requirement of unquestioning conformity to a set of rules.  True, God rightly expects us to conform to His principles, but principles differ significantly from rules.

Principles, which are basic truths and can be defined as a collection of moral and ethical standards, call for deep  application in one’s life, yielding consistent behavior marked by intrinsic integrity.  Rules, collectively, which are defined as a body of regulations for governing conduct, an authoritative prescription for observable or extrinsic behavior, merely label an action as black or white, wrong or right.

While some rules are good and may even be God-given, most serve as smoke screens for individuals who seek power and control not only over their own lives, but oftentimes over the lives of others.  It’s much easier, after all, to follow a set of rules: rules categorize the messy complications of life into neat little boxes.  Applying principles, on the other hand, and setting standards according to each new situation in our lives requires a lot more thought.  It is worth noting that the fundamentalist branches of most religious groups seem to prefer to define their religion by a set of rules rather than to inculcate broad principles and standards into the fabric of their spiritual life.  We love to make rules to control our (others’?!) behavior, but more rules don’t make purer hearts.  “Rules . . . lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence” (Col. 2:20-23 NIV).

Controlling others
Power and control are the natural outcomes of rule-centered groups, and taken together they are the second characteristic of extremism.  Such power and control are exerted over all members of fundamentalist groups within religious communities, but especially over women in the form of strict rules of dress, imposed silence, and a subservient position.

Extreme rules
Adopting a severe, drastic, or intense lifestyle extending far beyond the norm is the last characteristic of extremism.  In Goodwin’s book, pp 3-4, which details the plight of the Afghan people under the Taliban, it is noted that the fundamentalist regime claimed it was restoring the “purity of Islam” to Afghanistan.  The Taliban’s 36-year-old deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sher Abbas Stanakzai, is quoted as saying, “Time should be spent serving the country and praying to God.  Nothing else.  Everything else is a waste of time, and people are not allowed to waste their time.”  For women, the restrictions were even harsher: female education and employment were banned.  One Taliban dictate reads, “Women, you should not step outside your residence.”  Minister Stanakzai said further, “Our current restrictions are necessary in order to bring the Afghan people under control.  We need these restrictions until people learn to obey the government.”

Extremism in Jewish life
Similar restrictions were put on Hebrew girls and women in varying degrees and at various times throughout their history.  In Jewish culture, the common male view of women as taught by the rabbis was extremely condescending.  Women were equated with children and slaves.

While women were also defined by their noble domestic duties as wife and mother, they were yet subordinate to their husbands in every way.  Although there was honor associated with their domestic roles, women were so absolutely limited to marriage and motherhood that to be single or to be a barren wife was considered a grave disaster, a reproach, and often a curse from God.

The rabbis taught that women should be kept separate from men since their very nature enticed men to lust.  Male lust was considered to be the inescapable and inevitable consequence of the female presence.  The solution, therefore, was to keep women in the house or all covered up when in public, particularly their skin and their hair, which were considered to be sexual stimulants.  The rabbinical writings suggest that men were in greater need of protection from women than vice versa; that men were the innocents prone to the seduction of women.  That is why many historians believe that the separation of men and women in the synagogue was instituted.  Gary Wills, in his book Papal Sin, p. 111,  points out that “The sequestration of women in the outer parts of the synagogue, behind screens, expressed the same view – that they (women) could not deal with things holy.”

Jewish scholars were told never to speak to a woman in public, not even their wives.  Nor were they permitted to discuss the things of God with a woman as this was considered to be an enticement to sin: “It is a shame for a woman to let her voice be heard among men.”  Rabbinical writings also include dire warnings against teaching women the Torah (the first five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy).  “A woman should not read the Torah.”  And, “Whoever teaches his daughter Torah is as though he taught her obscenities.  Let the words of Torah rather be destroyed by fire than imparted to a woman.  A woman has no learning except in the use of the spindle.”

Only men could be disciples of a rabbi and learn by sitting at the teacher’s feet.  Women were considered incapable of serious study.  They would also be a sexual distraction to the male students, called disciples.

Women also did not count in the necessary quorum of ten in order for an official synagogue service to be held.  If you had nine men and fifty women, you could not have a synagogue service.

In legal cases, “The testimony of one hundred women is not equal to that of one man.”  Even the Apostles did not believe the testimony of Mary Magdalene after Jesus’ resurrection!  A common prayer of Jewish rabbis was, “Adonai, thank You that I am not a Gentile, not a slave, and not a woman.”  Josephus, the noted first-century Jewish historian wrote, “The woman . . . is in all things inferior to man”  (Aga Apion: Book II, 25).

In the Roman world
In Graeco-Roman culture, women were also considered to be, and were treated as, inferior to men in every way and were under some form of perpetual male authority, first their father’s then their husband’s.  Women were identified only in their relationship to men.  Single and childless women were even penalized by law.

Aristotle, whose writings contributed to the formation of Western culture, explained in his Politics, The Natural Inferiority of Women (quoted in Philosophers at Work, Politics, Book I, by Eliot Cohen, p. 131 ff), that the man is a natural ruler who leads by “the exercise of mind” and the woman, his natural subject, by her body “gives effect to such foresight.”  Aristotle claimed the husband rules “in virtue of his superiority,” and that “the better (the male) gets more of what is good.”  Aristotle echoed the voice of an ancient poet, saying that, “Silence is a woman’s glory.”  Aristotle leaves no question as to woman’s place when he states in Animal Conception (quoted by St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica), “In terms of nature’s own operation, a woman is inferior and a mistake.”

Subordination of women
Extreme Muslims, as already noted, presently require that a woman not be seen nor heard.  She is to be literally all covered up, and she is explicitly ordered to keep quiet.

According to Rabbi Dr. Menachem Brayer, Professor of Biblical Literature at Yeshiva University, in his book, The Jewish Woman in Rabbinic Literature A Psychosocial Perspective, pp. 316-17, it was the custom of Jewish women to go out in public with a head covering which sometimes even covered the whole face, leaving one eye free.  He quotes an ancient Rabbical saying, “It is not like the daughters of Israel to walk out with heads uncovered,” and “Cursed be the man who lets the hair of his wife be seen…a woman who exposes her hair for self-adornment brings poverty.”

Women were often considered chattel, part of the family estate, in contrast to male children who were heirs of the estate.  As Rabbi Louis Epstein, in The Jewish Marriage Contract, p. 121, explains:  “They (women) are owned – before marriage, by the father; after marriage, by the husband.”

Some Muslim scholars and clerics have made sincere efforts to prove such harsh treatment has no basis in the Koran.  This study is also intended to point out that such restrictions are also foreign to biblical principles and that rabbinical sayings are, after all, neither inspired nor scripture  They are merely the opinions of rabbis and religious leaders, collected and codified down through the centuries.  These are the same religious leaders who harassed and opposed Jesus and were upbraided by him.

Extremes beget extremes.  Our instruction is to “Let your moderation be known unto all men” (Phil. 4:5).  Ordering our lives by a set of rigid rules, craving for or exercising power and control over each other, and adopting or insisting upon a lifestyle which is far from the norm is not God’s way.  Living instead by principles, treating each other with respect, submitting to each other in love, and living a life of peace with our fellows is God’s way.

A Valid Question for Us
It is valid to ask, then, whether such restrictions, absent from both the Koran and the Old Testament, exist in reality and honesty in the New Testament. This question must be asked because, sadly, extreme Christians impose similar restrictions on women today. It is a sobering thought for us that, as with Islam and Judaism, fundamentalist branches of Christianity have embraced extremism to their own hurt.

It is especially disheartening to see both men and women turn away from the Truth because of what they perceive to be overbearing rules in some sections of our own brotherhood.  Within our community, opinions and practices vary widely.  In some ecclesias, women are not allowed to speak at any meeting whatsoever, not even in informal Bible classes; women and girls are under strict dress codes; and biblical “submission” is sometimes translated into “subservience.”  In contrast, other ecclesias allow  women to speak at all services but the most formal.  They have no imposed dress code and women’s opinions and input in discussion and decisions are not only respected but sought and valued.  Why the difference?

Linda Wilkinson

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