Emma Jean Liberman
It is pretty fascinating that while the Western world is extraordinarly convinced of its moral superiority regarding how it treats women, the Qu'ran seems to be a bit more progressive towards the treatment of women than the Bible.
In the Bible, Lot offers his daughters as sacrifices to rapists, G-d punishes women far more than men (with pain and death in childbirth) for seeking knowledges in the Old Testament while in the Qu'ran Adam and Eve share the blame: partners, rather than placing men as masters. Allah creates men and women out of clay together as equals: Genesis in the Bible is a bit more murky about the subject
Americans today, even the liberals, justify military intervention today in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan today by talking about freeing women in veils without asking how they relate to their religion, which does reek of neo-colonialism and paternalism in the very worst sense.
It is pretty fascinating that while the Western world is extraordinarly convinced of its moral superiority regarding how it treats women, the Qu'ran seems to be a bit more progressive towards the treatment of women than the Bible.
In the Bible, Lot offers his daughters as sacrifices to rapists, G-d punishes women far more than men (with pain and death in childbirth) for seeking knowledges in the Old Testament while in the Qu'ran Adam and Eve share the blame: partners, rather than placing men as masters. Allah creates men and women out of clay together as equals: Genesis in the Bible is a bit more murky about the subject
Americans today, even the liberals, justify military intervention today in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan today by talking about freeing women in veils without asking how they relate to their religion, which does reek of neo-colonialism and paternalism in the very worst sense.
I agree that the Bible does create much more of an explicit phallocentric society. The most important differences I think are the ones from Genesis that you mentioned. However, I really don't think that we need to make a distinction between the two texts in terms of which one is more egalitarian. From what I can tell, both texts are just about as unfair as the other. While the bible goes about creating the male-dominated society in a more allegorical manner, this one passage from the 4th serah in the Qur'an (titled: 'Women') actually just word for word says: "You will never be able to treat your wives with equal fairness, however much you may desire to do so..." Now I'm not saying that just because the Qur'an says this in such a matter of fact way that it's somehow worse or more barbaric than the Bible; not at all. Both of these texts are complete paragons of sexism, and there is very little else in either text in terms of redemption for these moral failings.
ReplyDelete