Recently in Religion Category

Girls to marry militants, orders Taliban 2 Jan 2009

(from The Times of India)

ISLAMABAD: On the heels of their crusade against girls going to schools, the Taliban have now issued new dictum in the areas under their sway asking parents of the grown up daughters to marry them to militants or "face dire consequences".

This new force-marriage campaign is being run in most of the areas in the Pakistan's troubled NWFP through regular announcements made in mosques to congregations.

Such instances have come to light recently through some of the affected women daring to go to authorities for justice rather than meekly surrender to the militants’ dictates.

Salma, who teaches in a primary school in Peshawar, told the Dawn newspaper that Taliban have told families to declare in mosques if they have unmarried girls so that their hand could be given in marriage, most probably to militants.

If they did not do so, the girls would be forcibly married off, the newspaper quoted the 30-year-old widow as saying.

*A very long post on a very vexing topic.*

Everything that mainstream and even right-wing America believes is good is, to the Daughters, poison.

To the Visionary Daughters/ Issacharian Daughters/ stay-at-home daughters movements, the words "independence" and "self-achievement" are anathema.

Who are these daughters?

They are young, predominantly European-ancestry women living in the West, practicing Christianity and Judaism, who not only believe, as many evangelical Christians do, that a woman's role in life is to support her girls alone, but who encourage unmarried young women to live with their parents and to forego outside jobs in favor of "training" in housework. They do this so that they might help their *father* fulfill his life-vision, until such time as the daughter is given in marriage to help her husband fulfill HIS life-vision.

As then-Stay At Home Daughter Genevieve in New Zealand writes,

"It was not so long ago that my ambition was to be the first woman prime minister of New Zealand. And it was even less time ago that I was working a highly paid legal executive job for a prominent solicitor [lawyer]. The Lord has done quite a work in my life since this time. He has turned my heart to my FATHER, my family and my home. (all caps Okra's)

Genevieve learned to help her father with his vision, his business (as opposed to pursuing her own self-focused interests and jobs). Presumably, her mother did not have a vision of her own that required support. When Genevieve married Pete, she saw it as an explicit transfer of authority and vision from her father to her new husband. Now her job was to support Pete in HIS business of his own choice:

"[my husband] Pete would set the vision; he would follow the calling God had for him and seek to be fruitful in the areas God wanted him to take dominion. And I would help him to be successful in being fruitful. I would help him to see his vision to completion."

And this is only the tip of a deep iceberg.

The post on the main Feministing site last week about Old Spice's "Manliness" contest led me to a treasure trove of loudly-and-proudly anti-feminist, anti-humanist, anti-HUMAN philosophy. See, for only a few examples:

• A young Jewish woman in Israel advances her theory of "Domestic Felicity," in which girls/women must do everything they can to avoid university education. Seriously. Read the site.
• Maidens of the Home by American Maiden, a young Christian woman living at home with her parents who describes her occupation as "Keeper at Home -in-training." She writes: "Why is going through a secular college an assumed event in every high school graduate's life, but simply learning at home and continuing education in many mediums highly disregarded? The answer is clear. Karl Marx saw it plain and simple. Feminism."

What interests me is that some of the most visible leaders of this movement are people like the Botkin sisters, Anna Sofia and Elizabeth (aged 20 and 22), who are unmarried young women living in "their father's" home, yes, BUT who are also published authors, professional bloggers, and motivational speakers as well. A far cry from learning how best to scrub a toilet for one's future husband and children. Apparent disconnect? Here is what this duo has to say about their own domestic training:

Those who know us only by our public appearances see only a tiny part of our life, and can't know how much we enjoy doing the "unglamorous" work that makes a family thrive. We have laundry to wash, hungry people to feed, floors to mop, families to reach out to through hospitality, and men in the family who can always use an organizer, stenographer, editor, or someone to iron their shirts. This is our real life, and we prefer it. A few times a year we have opportunity to, in a sense, reap the harvest we have sown by writing, and it often involves going public, but to us it's just another privilege of service, like taking a meal to a needy family. We and our parents believe this is the kind of life that will best prepare us for marriage to any kind of man.

Their site is filled with such attempts to reconcile the sisters' very impressive (by "the world's" standards) accomplishments with their stated ideological goals of limiting their pre-marriage training to that of the domestic and "visionary helpmeet" variety.

Believe it or not, despite my religious pedigree (see below), I was unaware that this ideology had in the U.S. been crystallized into a formal movement that actively discourages young women from attending university to begin with or even from working at BURGER KING or THE GAP or BEST BUY after finishing high school. Because attending college or working any type of job on the "outside" breeds in women a "selfish" focus on herself and causes her to "value her own achievements" so much that entering a life of godly wifehood apparently loses its luster somewhat. In other words, keep 'em ignorant so they don't know what they're missing. (Explore the sites I link to; they actually use this exact language).

One self-professed anti-feminist writes:

"I was very depressed for a long time when I first came home after graduating from college. It took me between one and two years to wean myself away from dependence on the constant feedback of school grades to confirm my worth."

(Okra asks: as opposed to those other facets of life that DO confirm your worth, like washing the bathtub, unearthing a new bread recipe, and learning to sew so that if you meet a like-thinking man and marry him one day, you can run his household as an efficient chatelaine?)

When I was a junior in high school, I transferred from one private non secular high school to a smaller private non secular high school full of the smallest minded people I think I've ever met.

Patriarchy was stressed just as much as religion, after all it reads word for word in the Bible that women were created from man and so we must beneath them and are thus expected- by God, so they say, to take inferior roles in the workplace, at home, and in church. I remember one particular religion class where the teacher- a man, since women shouldn't be an authoritative teacher of religion to boys past a certain age, was instructing us young sixteen and seventeen year old women on how to be good X women. We are supposed to marry a good X husband, have his children and raise them in the X faith, and if we have a job, it shouldn't be one that makes more money than our husband's. There even exists a line within traditional marriage vows where brides promise to 'obey' their husbands, but that line does not exist in the groom's lines. I was always very offended to sit in that classroom and constantly be told how women were second class citizens compared to men. I remember the class that completely blew me away was when he printed out an article on women supporting pro-choice and condemning them as sinners and refused to hear anyone disagree with his opinion.

It was also not an uncommon occurrence for a few of the men teachers to act sexually inappropriate around their students, one incident being the gym teacher getting called out by his female student for looking down her shirt and his rebuttle to her was that she shouldn't dress like such a little tramp. The incident was pushed under the rug after the school guilted her parents,who were parishioners at the church affiliated with the school, to keep quiet.

It was a total culture shock as I have been reared in a very liberal family where I was assured I could do and be whatever I want, and was never taught to recognize gender as an obstacle or handicap. Needless to say I transferred once more my senior year- to public school- finally!

Peace, Love
Breezy

My mom is a very religious. She's listening this guy preaching on the radio as I'm writing this, and I can't believe the words that are coming out of his mouth.

He's saying that the husband 'should be their wifes pastor', and jokes that if the husbands wife is coming to church to listen to him, and get advice from him, that he has 'too much power' over that mans wife. He also quoted a section in the bible that basically says that women are supposed to be silent in church.

There are many dated passages in the bible, and some that are just crazy. Like this one:

"No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the lord"- Deuteronomy 23:1

I wonder of that pastor believes that one too.

On yesterday's Democracy Now they interviewed Father Roy Bourgeois. He has been a staunch (and vocal) opponent of the Army's School of the Americas as well as the Iraq war. Now, the Catholic church wasn't thrilled with that, but it wasn't until he showed support for women that they really freaked out.

He has spoken out in favor of allowing women to be ordained as Catholic priests. Because of this, the Vatican is threatening to excommunicate him if he doesn't recant his beliefs.

This is my favorite quote from the interview:

"But what we have here, at its very core, is the sin of sexism. And like racism, no matter how hard we try to justify it or bring in, you know, God to bless discrimination, in the end it is always immoral."

Now, I'm no fan of Catholicism (or religion in general). I went to Catholic chirch as a child and it's definitely not for me. Pope Benedict has only made things worse - going even farther to take away women's rights and focusing less on the humanity aspect of religion than John Paul II did. But I feel that if a woman wants to be a priest, that should be her right.

No one should be denied their right to exercise their religious beliefs because of their gender. As long as they aren't hurting themselves or others, no one should be denied their religion for any reason. And if someone feels called to become a priest, that's what they should be.

The unfortunate sucess of Proposition 8 in California leading to the denial of marriage rights for homosexual couples in California has put the Mormon church in the spotlight. With the fervent support/spmorships of Prop 8 from many bigoted Mormons, it would seem on the surface that Mormonism and feminism are completely incompatible—what with the Church of LDS history of being sexist, racist, and most recently—highly homophobic.

Fellow Feministing community member, ohmissjulie, recently blogged about being “Mormon, Feminist, and Kind of Afraid.” I think it is important to point out to her that she is most definitely not alone as a Mormon feminist. Pulitzer Prize winning Harvard University History Professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich-- the woman who coined the phrase (that we have all seen on t-shirts or buttons at one rally or another “ Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History” is a devout Mormon AND feminist.

A recent post has drawn quite a strong reaction. While I do not mean to comment on the opinions of the author of that post, it set me thinking about the role religion plays in our personal understanding of feminism, and whether the two are mutually incompatible.

The obvious answer would, of course, be no. The stance an organisation cannot be conflated with the positions adopted by its individuals (and surely the latter is diverse).

But my response to that is limited by my own experience.

While I was baptised into the Roman Catholic faith as an infant, and while I continue to identify as Catholic almost fifteen years later, I also consider myself feminist, even knowing that many of the Church's teachings are in direct opposition to the values of feminism. This includes the rejection of homosexuality, Humanae Vitae, excommunication upon those involved in female ordination, and so forth.

A Mormon feminist posted about her precarious position of being a feminist Mormon, amid the Prop 8 battle and the post-8 backlash against the Church. A lot of posters there are sympathetic to her plight and apologetic for hateful statements or stereotypes they or their allies may have made about Mormons, even while they admit they're very frustrated with her church (technically, my church as well, though I've got a pretty nice resignation letter I'm perfecting and mustering the courage to send in).

While I could talk about Mormonism, feminism, bigotry, and GLBT issues until I was blue in the face (and I may on this very blog, when I have more time to sit down and I'm in a less tense emotional state about the entire matter), I'd instead just like to talk about one pet peeve of mine in particular. It isn't unique to the issue of Mormonism and feminism, but I hear it when these two identities are being discussed quite often.

I'm a Mormon. And I'm a Feminist. I don't say either of those things as often as I probably should, and I certainly don't often state them together. I do my best to live in such a way that both affiliations are pretty obvious; my semi-conscious hope, I think, is that my actions will speak loudly enough that I won't have to bring up the actual labels themselves, so then I can be who I am without having to face the social consequences of my beliefs. The Mormon and Feminist communities have always had - how do I put this delicately? - a complicated relationship, and I've always been afraid that owning one aspect of my worldview would immediately ostracize me from the people who owned the other.

I've never felt that fear more poignantly than these past few months, with the leadup to and fallout from the vote on Proposition 8 in California. Half of my friends have been vehemently defending Prop 8; the other half have spoken out passionately against it. And me? Well, I don't vote in California, I've said. And I've taken that as my excuse to completely wuss out of the entire issue. I hid my feminism and my liberalness from my religious friends. I hid my religiosity from my liberal, feminist friends. I tried to make sense of the issue while I retreated from it - which, by the way, has turned out to be impossible. Unable to understand without involving myself in it, I figured I could just bury my head in the sand for a while and everything would somehow just blow over.

By Jameelah Medina

I know it is difficult for some to understand why a piece of cloth on someone’s head can have so much importance. But the hijab is more than a piece of cloth for those of us who wear it. For me it is a privilege to be able to wear the hijab , and it is a daily reminder of my faith. It is a way for me to be in charge of my own femininity and to make an active decision about what I choose to cover and what I choose to let people see. For a Muslim woman to be forced to remove her hijab in public where men are present is a humiliating and possibly traumatizing experience that she will not soon forget. This humiliation and indignation is the same that a non-Muslim woman would feel if she were forced to take off her shirt and bra and walk around topless in public where men are present. Just as most women feel that their breasts are a private area that is to be covered in public, many Muslim women feel the same way about their hair. The forcible removal of a woman’s hijab should be just as unacceptable as the compulsory removal of a woman’s shirt and bra.

In December 2005, when I was arrested for having an invalid train pass, I was forced to remove my hijab in front of male deputies at the West Valley Detention Center. I felt completely naked. I honestly cannot imagine feeling more humiliated even if they had forced me to remove all of my clothing. What I mean to say is that, for me, wearing clothes without my hijab is just as meaningless as wearing a hijab without any clothes on — either way, I feel exposed. When the officers compelled me to remove my hijab , it was as if they forced me to remove all of my clothing because of the level of indignation I experienced. No woman should have to experience this even if she has been arrested.

In this country, we are supposedly free to practice our religion, and we do not check our federally protected rights at the jailhouse door. Or better said, we should not be forced to relinquish those rights, especially when that right can be so easily protected by having certain policies in place. When I told the deputy that I could not take off my hijab , there should have been a policy that would allow her to check my hair in private. At the airport, I am always taken into a private room or behind a curtain, where 2 or 3 female TSA agents have me unpin my hijab , they check my hair, and I put my hijab back on. But because there was no such policy in place at the jail, I was forced to remain uncovered for approximately 12 hours and to be seen uncovered by male deputies. During this time I was also hyper-aware of the presence of male voices in my proximity, and felt utterly vulnerable.

Once I became aware that my rights had been violated, I did not have any other choice but to seek justice for the wrong that was done; I had to do it for myself and for every other woman who has ever and will ever be put in that unnecessary situation. I am just so thankful that the ACLU was able to take the case and fight to safeguard the religious rights of women. As a result, San Bernardino County will implement new policies that protect women’s rights, and I hope that all jurisdictions will follow this example.

Learn more about my case and the settlement at: www.aclu.org/muslimwomen .