The God who hates women
Oppression of women under religious regimes.
Eve after the fall by Alexandre Cabanel.
T his summer more than a hundred
women in the Maldives were
sentenced to public flogging for
extramarital sex while about fifty men
received the same sentence. On July 5, an
eighteen-year-old girl received hundred
lashes in front of a jeering crowd of
men. Local journalists reported that
the woman fainted after receiving the
lashes and required hospitalisation. She
was pregnant at the time of sentencing,
and her punishment was deferred until
her child was born. The court ruled that
the woman’s pregnancy was proof of her
guilt, while the men involved in the case
were acquitted.
Maldives Dissent reported that the
woman was actually under-age when
the sex took place: “Sadly, this is not
an isolated case. At least twenty-two
girls under eighteen years of age were
sentenced to public flogging, in 2006,
for fornication or giving birth out of
wedlock. Under Maldivian law child
sexual abuse requires a confession by
the alleged abuser or testimony by four
36 September/october 2009
By Ophelia Benson
eyewitnesses, for a successful conviction
to take place. This means that if a victim
reports sexual abuse but the perpetrator
denies it and there are no eyewitnesses,
the court can find the child guilty of
having consented to the sex. The state
would then wait for the girl to turn
eighteen and then carry out the sentence
of public flogging, in effect, punishing
her for reporting the crime.”
After a British journalist, Maryam
Omidi, reported the incident in Minivan
News, there were demonstrations in
support of flogging. A letter to Minivan
News accused it of trying “to tarnish sharia
law tirelessly in various indirect forms.”
The letter writer explained, “Women
get pregnant and that’s the reality of
life. Women who fornicate are seen by
the public, unlike men. Two parties are
involved, but women should know that
naturally they are created differently.
They get pregnant and consequently the
chances of receiving the due punishment
are higher.”
The president of the Maldives,
Independent World report
Mohammed Nasheed, is a liberal, but is
inhibited by his dependence on Islamist
coalition allies and by opponents who are
using a debate over sharia as a political
tool.
In April, Afghanistan’s president,
Hamid Karzai, signed a new Shia
Personal Status Law which regulates
marriage, divorce, and inheritance
for the country’s Shia population. The
law includes provisions that require a
woman to ask permission to leave the
house except on urgent business, a duty
to make herself up or dress up for her
husband on demand, and a duty not to
refuse sex when her husband wants it.
Women in the Afghan parliament
complained that the law was rushed
through with the help of several
prominent Shia leaders. Many women’s
rights activists who protested the
law received threats while their fears
were compounded by the killing of a
prominent women’s rights campaigner
and local councillor, Sitara Achakzai, the
week the law was signed.
 In July, the law was amended and sent
back to the parliament, with an added
clause allowing husbands to starve their
wives if they refuse to have sex. On July
27, it came into force through an official
gazette. “Karzai has made an unthinkable
deal to sell Afghan women out in return
for the support of fundamentalists in
the August 20 election,” Human Rights
Watch noted in a statement.
In Dublin, on May 20, the Ryan
Commission released its report on abuse
of children in industrial schools run by
religious orders in Ireland, focusing on
the period from 1936 to 1970. The report
runs to thousands of pages in five volumes
and tells of systematic deprivation
and abuse – physical, intellectual and
emotional – that shocked Ireland to its
core.
To take just one example, chapter
seven in volume two, running more
than hundred pages, covers just
one institution, largely for girls:
Saint Vincent’s Industrial School,
Goldenbridge. It has headings on physical
abuse, corporal punishment, formal
beatings on the landing (page after page
of horror), punishment for bedwetting,
climate of fear, discrimination, emotional
abuse, sexual abuse, neglect of children’s
basic needs, making rosary beads for sale
to a factory (arduous forced labour with
harsh punishments for failure to meet a
demanding quota) and much more.
In other words, the report paints a
hideous, blood-chilling picture of settled,
official, routine cruelty endured by
already unhappy, lonely and traumatised
children, mostly girls.
In March, news broke that a nine-year-
old Brazilian girl had an abortion after
she had been raped and impregnated
with twins by her stepfather. The local
archbishop, José Cardoso Sobrinho,
declared that the girl’s mother and the
doctors who performed the abortion
were automatically excommunicated.
In July, the Vatican produced a
document, published on page seven of
L’Osservatore Romano which unequivocally
confirmed automatic excommunication
for anyone involved in an abortion:
“Formal cooperation in an abortion
constitutes a grave offence. The church
attaches the canonical penalty of
excommunication to this crime against
human life. The church does not thereby
intend to restrict the scope of mercy.
Rather, she makes clear the gravity of
the crime committed, the irreparable
harm done to the innocent who is put to
death, as well as to the parents and the
whole of society.”
Religious journalist Karen Armstrong
has written many books and articles
insisting that religion is centrally about
compassion, but this is not the case.
Perhaps she means it ought to be, and
that certainly seems right. If you are
going to have religion, it ought to put
compassion first. But wishing does not
make it so, in the real world, religion
is centrally concerned with control,
discipline, following rules – and harsh
punishment.
The usual response to that claim
is that real religion, religion properly
understood, is about compassion,
and all the rule-enforcing and brutal
chastisement is the product of
misunderstanding. But that won’t do – it
is no good pretending the ideal is the real
while the real is just confusion. Reality
is what real people really do, not what
they might do if only everyone were
better and kinder. Some religions and
denominations do put compassion first,
and so do many believers, but that is not
enough to justify the claim that religion
as such is primarily about compassion.
In any case, even if religion is partly
or potentially about compassion, it has
other features which make it dangerous
for subordinated groups. We are often
reminded of Wilberforce and Martin
Luther King and Desmond Tutu – but
they came after many centuries of
Christian support for slavery and other
forms of subordination.
The problem is that religious law
is sacred law and as such is above mere
human needs and wishes. Attempts
to change laws and customs are often
countered by claims that they were
ordained by God and that it is human
impertinence and blasphemy to attempt
to improve them.
That is the great difference between
secular law and religious commands.
Even secular legal instruments that
are designed to be partly immune
from majority will, such as written
constitutions and universal declarations
of rights, are still known to be human
agreements rather than donations from
a deity. They are backed by reasons,
not revelations. Religious codes and
holy books, by contrast, are taken to
have been handed down by a deity who
Independent World report
Religion dresses up power
in robes and mitres, it
disguises force majeure as
the will of a male God.
is no longer available for amendment
or appeal. From that point of view, it
does not matter whether contemporary
human beings think the codes are good
for human beings or not: it is not their
affair, and they have no right and no
power to change things.
The God of the monotheistic religions
is male, which is not surprising, since it
was males who created those religions.
But the result is that even now, when it
has finally dawned on much of humanity
that women are not naturally inferior
or subordinate, many devout believers
continue to believe that women are and
should be subject to a myriad of unequal
laws.
Religion dresses up power in robes
and mitres, it disguises force majeure as
the will of a male God. Men are doing
what God wants them to do, and so are
women. Women have narrow confined
restricted lives and no right to their own
will because that is what God ordained.
The pill is sugared – and the door is
slammed shut.
This is interesting because religion
is widely supposed to be centrally about
compassion, justice, mercy – qualities
not usually attributed to enforcing
the subordination of the underdog.
It can be tempting to conclude that
compassion and justice are simply labels
attached to whatever religion does, to
make its votaries feel good, rather than
descriptions of reality.
However that may be, the reality is
that religion is very often somewhere
on the scene when women are being
regulated, or punished, or deprived, or
coerced. What would otherwise look
like stark bullying is very often made
respectable and holy by a putative
religious law or aphorism or scriptural
quotation. �
Ophelia Benson is an editorial advisor to
Independent World Report and Editor of
butterfliesandwheels.com. Her latest book,
coauthored with Jeremy Stangroom: Does
God Hate Women? (Continuum, 2009)
September/october 2009 37