Religions and Gender. More Critique.

1. Frances Kissling is an expert on the Catholic Church, and her thoughts on the Pope's statement about temporary clemency for women who have had abortions is well worth reading, because it has meat and gristle in it:

 The church, at its best, is not about punishment. But unfortunately, when it comes to women and sex, the church is rarely at its best. After all, there are only seven sins for which one might be automatically excommunicated—and ordinary murder of people, and even massacres, are not among them. Only abortion and an attempt to assassinate the pope might get you automatically excommunicated.

But the question of automatic excommunication is more complex than that.  Read Frances on the whole topic.

Elsewhere  I read that women in priesthood is permanently off the table, that god always intended priesthood to be reserved for men alone.  And the current Pope agrees:

 In reality, the letter offers false compassion. It’s one of many missteps this pope has made in what is, I’m sure, a sincere effort to understand and honor women. For instance, he has insisted that the subject of women priests is off the table. And while he speaks of putting more women in positions of power in the church, he rejected the idea of appointing women to head Vatican agencies as tokenism. He talks about the “feminine genius” of women who are kind, conciliatory and self-sacrificing, and he says we need a new theology of women (not persons)—but he does nothing about it.

2.  If the Catholic Church is problematic for women's equality, most mosques are worse.  Men and women are segregated inside the mosques, the spaces allocated for women look to be much smaller and placed so that it's hard to hear the imam (always a man), and conservative preachers tell women not to leave their homes even to go to mosque.  I first read stories about a proposed women's mosque in Bradford, UK last May.  The reason for the idea of a women's mosque:

Muslim Women’s Council boss Bana Gora says the mosque would be “run by women” and is in response to inadequate facilities in Islamic religious buildings dissuading females from attending.
The radical move, to be carried out in Bradford, promises to challenge traditions in the Muslim community and could provoke controversy.
Many traditional Muslim women living in Britain pray in their homes because they are dissuaded from attending mosques by conservative scholars.

The title of the linked article is worth thinking about a bit more: 

This mosque is for WOMEN: Brit Muslims challenge sexism with UK’s first female-only mosque

Here we enter a fascinating world where defining sexism is hard.  If this mosque is supposed to be for the most traditional women believers what they probably already believe would by my definition be extremely sexist. 

For example, a belief in divinely ordered extreme sex segregation everywhere* creates big problems for women's equality, and a sex-segregated system of mosques wouldn't challenge that, at least in the first round.**  And I'm not at all sure that a traditional female believer would accept the idea that other women could lead prayers.

In any case, the August article on the women's mosque proposal seems to show a fairly watered down version, with only the mosque management being female and the sex-segregated prayer spaces more equally placed.

I wish to finish with an explanation of the title of this post:

It's short-hand for looking at the nasty underbellies of major religions which also do a lot of good, but which truly make gender equality incredibly difficult to achieve, because gender inequality is seen as divinely ordained, and the acceptable versions are those which were most common in Middle Eastern societies about two thousand years ago.

 


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*Based initially on what the Koran told Prophet Mohammed's wives to do, and that in a war camp.
**In the longer run it could allow for a different interpretation of the various holy texts.

This mosque is for WOMEN: Brit Muslims challenge sexism with UK’s first female-only mosque - See more at: http://muslimglobalnews.com/breaking-news/this-mosque-is-for-women-brit-muslims-challenge-sexism-with-uks-first-female-only-mosque/#sthash.QQdckrD4.dpuf

Muslim Women’s Council boss Bana Gora says the mosque would be “run by women” and is in response to inadequate facilities in Islamic religious buildings dissuading females from attending.
The radical move, to be carried out in Bradford, promises to challenge traditions in the Muslim community and could provoke controversy.
Many traditional Muslim women living in Britain pray in their homes because they are dissuaded from attending mosques by conservative scholars.
- See more at: http://muslimglobalnews.com/breaking-news/this-mosque-is-for-women-brit-muslims-challenge-sexism-with-uks-first-female-only-mosque/#sthash.QQdckrD4.dpuf

Muslim Women’s Council boss Bana Gora says the mosque would be “run by women” and is in response to inadequate facilities in Islamic religious buildings dissuading females from attending.
The radical move, to be carried out in Bradford, promises to challenge traditions in the Muslim community and could provoke controversy.
Many traditional Muslim women living in Britain pray in their homes because they are dissuaded from attending mosques by conservative scholars.
- See more at: http://muslimglobalnews.com/breaking-news/this-mosque-is-for-women-brit-muslims-challenge-sexism-with-uks-first-female-only-mosque/#sthash.QQdckrD4.dpuf

Muslim Women’s Council boss Bana Gora says the mosque would be “run by women” and is in response to inadequate facilities in Islamic religious buildings dissuading females from attending.
The radical move, to be carried out in Bradford, promises to challenge traditions in the Muslim community and could provoke controversy.
Many traditional Muslim women living in Britain pray in their homes because they are dissuaded from attending mosques by conservative scholars.
- See more at: http://muslimglobalnews.com/breaking-news/this-mosque-is-for-women-brit-muslims-challenge-sexism-with-uks-first-female-only-mosque/#sthash.QQdckrD4.dpuf