Is Islam sexist? (user search)
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  Is Islam sexist? (search mode)
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Poll
Question: Is Islam sexist?
#1
yes
 
#2
no
 
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Partisan results

Total Voters: 35

Author Topic: Is Islam sexist?  (Read 3526 times)
angus
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« on: January 18, 2006, 10:18:08 AM »


I believe that's probably correct.  I didn't vote in the other thread because it was such a scholarly question, and I'm not a religious scholar, and I'm too lazy to get the books down and have a look see.  Also, I'm a big fan of looking at it all as it was originally written, so I like to read the Qur'an in arabic.  But my arabic is so rusty that it takes me the better part of an afternoon just to read one Surah.  Okay, that's an exaggeration, but I'm rather like an archeologist decipering heiroglyphics, dictionaries open and pads and pens sprawled out all over the table, when I read ancient holy books.  And most of the others I have only English translations. 

Still, all that I have read seem to have some sexism.  Hell, even the Tao of Elvis has some passages you may regard as sexist. 

I think we too often confuse such neutral concepts as sexism and racism for the damaging concepts of misogyny, racial bigotry, and xenophobia.  And ignorance can lead to dire consequences.  It's like Dr. Zoidberg on Futurama who can't really operate on humans very well because he's too lazy or too ignorant to know much about human anatomy.  Californians about 2 years ago decided whether to completely remove racism from official questionaires.  Remember that?  The proposition was, as a followup to prop 209 from years earlier, to not allow race on any form because it is racist information.  Of course it's racist!  But racism in this case can save a patient's life.  If a physician reading a chart is able to see that a patient is black, he may check for sickle-cell anemia, but it may not occur to him to do so if such information isn't available.  And there are many other examples of racial data being useful.  And to consider any differences between races is, by definition, racist.  Wisely the people voted it down.

Similarly with sexism.  Zoidberg may not remember that their body parts are different, and that they have different sexual functions, but you should.  And these differences are the a result of millions of years of biological endeavor and adaptation, one sex is bound to behave differently than the other while a fetus is generated and maintained, for example.  One may rest and eat while pregnant while the other must go out and kill the mammoth and pay the DSL internet connection fee.  We discussed body fat before, for example.  Our species' survival depends on women having a high body fat content.  And to consider any differences between sexes is, by definition, sexist.

So Allah and Yahweh speak in terms of various duties.  To be sure, there are those who misinterpret these terms (though unless you study Arabic and Hebrew you will as well) to say what jobs women can and can't do.  But by and large most Muslims don't, as evidenced by the many elected and appointed females in muslim countries.  Queen Noor of Jordan writes of this often, and I advise any who is interested in the question to read her memoirs, advice, and other writings.  They may be found on the internet for free.

There also seems to be some confusion about what constitutes sexism.  opebo eloquently but misguidedly points out that many christians engage in Wife Beating.  This is a fact.  But the identifying feature of the act is not so much sexist as violence.  And, even that's not the most relevant point of the act.  Nor is sexism probably the underlying motivation here.  A man who regularly beats his wife is probably equally capable emotionally of regularly beating his brother.  But I'm no psychologist and neither is he, so we both probably speak guesses at this point.

All of which reminds me of an important suggestion from the Zen interpretation of Buddhism:  If you are a sexist, then you are a sexist.  Don't get too hung up on it.  It is who you are.  You will not achieve happiness by denial of that which you know to be true.  And it is not the abstract which hinders enlightenment anyway, but rather the fixation on the material.  Thus whether any group or institution is sexist, in the abstract, becomes less relevant than the path the individual chooses to follow.
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angus
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« Reply #1 on: January 18, 2006, 04:40:53 PM »


or queer.

yeah, I realize it's a subtle point, and I wouldn't argue that such beatings were more socially acceptable at one time than they are now.  I wonder if technology, rather than some great social enlightenment, hasn't changed that though.  Along the lines of "If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one to hear it...?"  I'll ask "If an LA cop beats a drunk homeless man and no one films it...?"  Certainly you can find wife-beaters among christians, muslims, jews, hindus, atheists, syncreticists, pantheists, etc.  But I'm not sure that it follows that by finding an example of a muslim beating his wife you have demostrated that the whole group is sexist.  I think it's more fundamental than that.  No doubt the male-dominated monotheistic religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam have had a profound effect on women's lives up to and including the present day.  After all, the mythology holds that Woman was created as an afterthought from Man's rib.

I reiterate that the broad definition that sexism is merely a recognition of sexual differences supercedes and subsumes all narrower definitions, and I'm not arguing so much against the statement that Islam (or any other religion, or even psychology & sociology for that matter) is sexist.  I agree with Ford as I said (although I have avoided voting in this poll and others like it).  But I think the "Sexism is Bad" mentality is not beneficial either.  I think a total ignorance of the psychological, physical, and social differences between women and men has the potential to do more damage than a recognition of these differences.  The disregard for modern science that shows that women and men are fundamentally chemically different is no better than the "Intelligent Design Should Be Taught In Public Schools" mentality. 

Religion should be applicable to both men and women, and therefore it should allow for interpretation within feminine-mind and masculine-mind contexts.  Thus religions that have survived are sexist.  Any religion which is not sufficiently sexist to appeal to both genders has extinguished itself.  Though I suppose it is possible that one or more religions will evolve that do not mention caste, race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, or ethnicity.  And these religions may eventually supplant current religions.
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