Islam vs. Christianity, Re: Feminism
Okay I know a lot of this will be anecdotal, also keep in mind throughout I don’t follow either religion. But I find it interesting how often white American women are encouraged to join the collectivist hate against “our enemies” to keep up the waning support for occupationist wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Specifically, the belief which is largely myth that “women here have it sooooo much better!” (with the underlying threat of “and if you don’t stay in line, little ladies, we can make things just as bad for you here.)
Now overall is it better to live in America than in Baghdad? Sure it is, for most people. You don’t have AMERICAN bombs landing on your neighborhood grocery stores, for one, and (if you can afford it) have an electricity supply you can count on. But you can’t blame that on Islam – the lack of security and basic needs in Baghdad is largely the fault of the American army.
But I digress.
I hear people say women are forced into marriage in those “other” cultures. Define forced. Do you think every married woman in the Islamic world is dragged in chains to her wedding? I mean – do you really think that? Are some marriages there forced? Sure. But as a young white Christian girl I knew of at least two forced marriages in my teen years – forced marriages of young girls who’d “gotten themselves knocked up”. It’s common enough that it’s referred to as a “shotgun wedding” – the imagery being that of an angry father forcing the man who “ruined” his daughter to marry her at gunpoint. Are these girls literally held at gunpoint to marry? Not usually – but economic coercion is unashamedly held over their heads. “Marry or get kicked out of my house” – to an uncertain fate.
I hear an uproar about honor killings, which are very certainly horrible. But it is interesting that we label such killings in the Muslim world so while turning our heads from the women killed in America every day. Women are killed for leaving their abusive husbands and boyfriends, and we blame… the woman! “Why didn’t she leave sooner, why did she pout up with him for so long, why didn’t she just have a gun to defend herself.”
“Over 5000 women and girls are killed every year by family members in so-called ‘honour killings’, according to the UN.” – http://www.stophonourkillings.com/
“In 2000, there were 1,805 females murdered by males in single victim/single offender incidents that were submitted to the FBI for its Supplementary Homicide Report.” – http://www.vpc.org/studies/dv5intr.htm
Given there are only 300 million people living in America, and approximately 1 billion estimated in “the Muslim World”, given that most women killed by their male partners are killed for leaving and thus angering or shaming him, how can you say the numbers aren’t equivalent? No we don’t call them honor killings in the states. No we don’t officially and legally sanction them. But society clearly has sympathies to the men who kill “their” women. Every time someone asks “why didn’t she leave”, every time someone suggests that her behavior helped contribute to his murderousness, every joke cracked about wife beating, shows the underlying societal callousness to the state of women. “Honor killings” overseas and the guy who kills his wife and their children here because she was leaving him have the same effect – they both are actions meant to control women by saying “behave the way ‘your’ men want you to behave, or die.” People don’t want to see men’s murdering of women in the US as in any way similar. People want to pretend it is all private, unconnected matters if it happens in the US. “Oh he was depressed, distraught, crazy.” People believe something is wrong with the individuals involved when a man kills a woman here. They do not want to look at how society encouraged and condoned the killing. We view white Americans as individuals acting alone, and those “other” people overseas as a faceless mass acting all together.
I hear people saying Islam allows and encourages wife beating in the Koran, as well as burqa wearing and whatever else. I have a copy of the Koran and have read it a few times. There are things in it about women I don’t like. but actually there is more in the Christian Bible that is misogynistic, at least from my perspective. Any white Westerner who takes the one passage in the Koran that seemingly justifies wife-beating, or the veiling of women and holds it up as an example of their deeply ingrained cultural misogyny, to be fair in their criticism, must also then deal with the following from the Bible:
“If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbors wife.” Deuteronomy 22:23-24
“If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover her head. A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” 1 Corinthians 11: 6-9
“I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.” 1 Timothy 2: 9-15
I grew up in an intensely Christian, Republican, rah-rah American culture. It was rife with violent, viciously protected, patriarchalism. Women were beaten, children were beaten, girls and women who in any way stepped out of line of what was considered godly, ladylike behavior were threatened with violence, and no, no one would have considered going to the police because EVERYONE WE KNEW was like this. Even questioning the behavior was seen as rebelliousness or mental illness, something that could doom you to an eternity of hellfire and torment. Women and girls who went “too far” were beaten, then abandoned to fend for themselves and no one ever heard from them again. Such girls and young women – runaways and throwaways – make up the majority of the slaves we call “prostitutes” in America. I remember as a young girl contemplating running away, but knowing if I did so I would likely be caught up by a pimp, and therefore making a rational decision to stay. Better the Devil you know than the devil you don’t.
Are all American Christian families like this? No! BUT NEITHER ARE ALL MUSLIM FAMILIES. BOTH are comprised of people, BOTH are infected with the violent coercion of patriarchy, BOTH use violence against women as a means to the end of keeping them in line as obedient, sweet homemakers and baby factories. If the violence has become more “tribalized” and seemingly sanctioned in war-troubled areas, well gee, guess who started the war! Countries where there is war and instability ALWAYS witness a decline in social behavior to the point of angry mobs killing people. Don’t tell me that, if America were occupied and destabilized, that in the American south and midwest you wouldn’t start to hear of more and more religious groups taking advantage of the situation to try to go back to “the good old days” where men wuz men and women had to wear ankle length dresses with petticoats and couldn’t make any legal decisions and were beaten with impunity and put in stocks if they dared sass their husband.
In short, there isn’t any cultural or inherent difference between White American Christian men and Muslim men that makes the first more nice and sweet and feminist than the latter. The two big differences are: the destabilization caused by wars which are in large part America’s fault anyway, and; media overstatement of the differences in an effort to distract from America’s own sins.
