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*This article is updated from the one City Press carried in Voices on September 26 2021
Many contemporary women are disenchanted with male-dominated religions, systems and attitudes that maintain or create female subordination, writes Alleyn Diesel.
Appalling scenes of women carrying small children, clasping the hands of young girls, fleeing ahead of Taliban forces armed with machine guns and rocket launchers were another reminder of the destructive power of religiously motivated forces devoid of authentic concern for the wellbeing of the human race.
Despite assurances by the Taliban government to honour women’s rights, many doubt this pledge.
Malala Yousafzai, a survivor of callous Pakistani Taliban violence, has said that:
What is the Taliban?
The Taliban, meaning “students” or “seekers”, originated from the Sunni Islam revivalist movement formed in 1866 in the north Indian town of Deoband, which is known for its religious seminaries.
Initially this movement engaged in interfaith debates with Hindu and Christian scholars, opposing the partition of India into Hindu and Muslim countries (Pakistan).
But since the late 1970s, encouraged by the Pakistani government, many of its members became more militant and fundamentalist, opposing Soviet – and later American – interference in Afghanistan.
Its followers remain extremely diverse, some espousing aspects of the peaceful mystical Sufi movement while others advocate militancy.
From September 1996 to December 2001 the Taliban ruled Afghanistan with Kandahar – the centre of the Pashtun tribe – as its capital, enforcing sharia law until being overthrown by US invasion following the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks.
READ: The Afghan war and imperial delusions
At its peak, the Taliban government was acknowledged by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, even though many leading Muslims and Islamic scholars were highly critical of its interpretation of Islamic law, its brutal massacre of Afghan citizens, and its burning of thousands of houses and vast areas of fertile land.
The Taliban’s despotic rule imposed strict interpretation of sharia law, brutal treatment of women and banning of all activities perceived as influenced by the infidel Western media, including artworks, movies and music, as well as ignoring and desecrating cultural and religious heritage such as the Garden of Babur in Kabul and the 2001 destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in the Bamiyan Valley.
Women were only allowed in public accompanied by a male relative and wearing a full burqa, with those breaking these rules frequently publicly whipped or executed.
The current Taliban resurgence is another reminder that religion is a complex and multifaceted aspect of human existence, which offers concepts of great profundity and depth, wielding great power to affect the future of all humanity, adversely or beneficently.
READ: Photos | How the Taliban engineered a ‘political collapse’ of Afghanistan
Sharia law derives from the Quran, the Hadith (preserved sayings of Prophet Muhammad) and the Sunnah, the Islamic body of traditional social and legal custom. Like any legal system, it is a complex compendium requiring expert interpretation.
Five legal schools differ on how such texts should be interpreted, each differing in certain places. The competent, inspired scholar interprets the message creatively, offering continually renewed expressions of sacredness.
Women and religion
Women’s place in religion has long been contested. Early civilisations – Old Europe, Minoan, Indus Valley, ancient Egyptian, classical Greek and Roman – envisaged divinity in both female and male guises.
Later, more formally organised religions established scriptures largely reflecting a masculinist world view, featuring male images of deity and establishing male-dominated priesthoods and leadership.
Assuming male experience as the norm, that it is “divinely ordained” for men to dominate women, enhances the status of men and subjugates women.
Denying women full participation in their religious communities marginalises their presence; it suppresses their voices.
Ironically, religion should be liberatory, promoting the wellbeing of all adherents, offering succour through life’s terrors and trials, and supplying answers to questions of ultimate significance. But too many women are trapped, rather than inspired and transformed, by religion.
READ: Alleyn Diesel | Is Zionism compatible with human rights?
Since the 1960s, feminist theology including in Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam has examined women’s role and status by reformulating practices, scriptures and theologies – questioning systems and attitudes which create or maintain male domination and female subordination – seeking egalitarianism for the transformation of society.
Scripture and women
A number of scriptural passages reflect negative attitudes towards women, and are often utilised by those striving to subjugate women. But the same scriptures offer other verses advocating just, egalitarian treatment of women.
One well-known Hindu text (Laws of Manu) demeans women:
However, Hinduism offers the greatest living resource for the veneration of female deities alongside the male, reflecting the inseparability of creative energy as the foundation of all life.
The Devi Mahatmyam praises the supreme female principle:
Several passages in Christian scriptures also appear to subjugate women:
Other statements counter such assertions, for example:
Likewise, an early 20th century Quranic translation reads:
This somewhat ambiguous interpretation can be balanced against:
Devout Muslims are aware that the prophet himself was repulsed by violence towards women.
On this, biographer, Muhammad ibn Sa’d, says:
Sheik Mohammad Akram Nadwi, dean of the Cambridge Islamic College, claims:
The earliest revelation of the word “read” was proclaimed in Surah 96:1, establishing Islam as a faith where the word and reading is central.
Believers must be taught to read. Literacy is itself sacred.
Because scriptural texts attempt to illuminate the ineffable, to express that which is beyond human language, they combine multiple layers of meaning so that “truths” propagated in a particular time and place can be deemed anachronistic, even totally erroneous, in another era.
Scriptures should not be interpreted as offering dogmas cast in stone, but as transforming our understanding of the mystery of the human condition, its fragility and mortality, able to speak to every epoch, urging empathy and social justice.
Women challenging injustice
After World War 2, it became evident that societies require legal guidance to protect against the recurrence of such an atrocity as the war was.
This resulted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights being adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. It confirmed the supreme value of each individual, guaranteeing the inalienable right to live free from want and oppression, each able to realise their full humanity.
READ: The return of the Taliban
Such rights supersede the freedom of religion to act in ways inimical to human wellbeing. They protect the vulnerable, especially children and women – and even animals – from abuse associated with supposedly religious demands.
Adherents of most traditions demonstrate the best and the worst of human nature, attempting to curb violence and aggression, and inspiring exquisite beauty in architecture, painting music and sculpture; but also causing devastating cruelty and suffering through crusades, “holy” wars, Jihad, inquisitions, tortures, witch-hunts – all blood and slaughter motivated by ignorance, intolerance, bigotry, xenophobia and misogyny.
Fatema Mernissi, whose book Beyond the Veil established her as an influential Muslim feminist theologian, maintains that women’s contemporary oppression in Islam stems from political manipulation of religion by power-seeking, archaic male elites.
Although some women are not uncomfortable wearing the veil, such men make the veil compulsory. It becomes a symbol of the elimination of women’s individuality, denying personal identity, and enforcing obedience and silence. Women’s only value becomes that of producing offspring, preferably male.
Women’s rebellion, called nushuz, which challenges this injustice, champions participation in democratic elections, and in political and professional careers, making their voices heard.
Attempts should be made by the Sufis to persuade the Taliban to lay down their arms and acknowledge that continued violence will never achieve peace.
Sufism offers a beacon of tolerance, peaceful acceptance of other traditions and empathy for all humanity; appreciating all things beautiful because God, the beautiful, loves the beautiful.
Afghans value Sufi shrines as spaces to unburden themselves. These safe havens should become more available to women to meet, talk, pray and meditate.
READ: ‘We should be hysterical’ – Arundhati Roy
Women’s strength and Sufi devotion present a persuasive challenge to the fundamentalist and the destructiveness of extremist Islamic movements.
Contemporary Afghan women have as role models their sisters of 1920s Afghan society, where women claimed freedom from many repressive cultural regulations, encouraged by Queen Soraya Tarzi and the royal family, who banned child marriage, polygamy and bride price.
Women have the capacity to promote the fundamentals of authentic faith, re-reading teachings in a new way for a new age, conserving and promoting beliefs and behaviour conducive to thriving existence, wielding religion as a force for the construction of a better world for all.
Rather than blaming religion for the abuse of women and provoking violence, all people of goodwill need to cooperate to break the chain of misogyny.
They need to nurture human wellbeing, distinguishing what fosters flourishing from what is harmful, inspiring artistic expression, especially much-revered poetry heritage, and encouraging the rejuvenating power of beauty. That is the way to rebuild a country where redemptive values are preserved and promoted.
Diesel has a PhD from the University of Natal, where she taught religious and gender studies
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