Since religion is expressed through the beliefs of its followers, we need to stop seeing “religion” as immutable and static, and that sanctity will crumble once we start questioning its teachings.
he recent sexual harassment allegations against two famous Muslim scholars, the American Nouman Ali Khan and Tariq Ramadan, serve as a ghastly reminder for us that the female body remains a mere object in religious teachings.
This means three things. First, women are reduced to their biological functions, as reflected in the general view on polygamy in Muslim communities, considered a valid mechanism to satisfy men, and in the never-ending controversy over the right to abortion in the Catholic Church.
Second, women are denied the authority to form doctrines and dogma; and third, an assumption that women must conform to stereotypes formed by patriarchal religious doctrines are enforced and maintained by male clerics.
In the context of the Catholic Church, these boxes frame the sinful Eve or Mary, a mother yet a virgin. In contemporary Islam, the choice is between a complacent hijab-donning wife or an angry feminist who will never encounter the fragrance of paradise.
Reducing women to their mere biological functions and maintaining patriarchal stereotypes render women an easy target of sexual abuse and other forms of physical violence under the cover of religious teachings; elevating women to non-human holiness such as St. Mary has resulted in the glorification of women’s sufferings as the only way to wash themselves of “bodily sin.”
Meanwhile, Muslims are supposed to accept men’s many “weaknesses,” such as their “proclivity” for sex, while accepting them as a qiwamah (leader) of women.
In the Catholic Church, women and their sexuality are always in the limelight, while the patriarchal Church regularly covers up scandals committed by their priests, and cloaks gender-based violence behind the veil of Papal doctrines. In the hypocritical Church, only men are truly human and contain the essence of the divine, while women and their sexual desires are treated as an unnatural force that men must control.
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