Morning Star

The cudgel of "islamophobia"

Dr Mark Durie has another excellent post on how women's rights are deteriorating in the places where Islamic fundamentalism is growing:

The world is in the midst of global Islamic revival.  This is actually a "reformation" in the sense that many of the world's Muslims are returning to Islam's roots.  According to many Islamic activists, it is a matter of Muslim pride that global Islam is on a reform path to become more authentic, returning to its origins in Muhammad's life and teaching.  This movement has been building momentum for over a century and it is far from exhausted. 

Muslim women are among those (along with non-Muslims and Muslim dissenters) who bear the brunt of Islam's progress in the modern era.

Read it all, as he explains why many women dread this revival. Pay particular attention to the initial argument concerning why there is no push-back against this cultural bulldozer: if Allah has spoken, then natural law, common sense, medical evidence and free will are useless as a counterweight. And women pay a terrible price--with both body and soul.

By the way, for a country that depends on tourism (the Maldives are beautiful atolls in the Indian Ocean) a stricter enforcement of shari'a law could really affect the economy. A secondary concern, but important nonetheless.

The Persecuted Church

I have a piece posted on Catholic Lane, related to a conference I attended over the weekend here in the Boston area.

Most riveting were the firsthand accounts of two young women, Juliana Taimoorazy, the Executive Director of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, and Cynthia Farahat, an Egyptian political activist and writer. They testified to daily harassment and oppression by police and radical Muslims. They spoke bravely about the constant fear and the innumerable political obstacles to living freely in societies predominated by Islam.

One of the most poignant comments was made by Ms. Farahat, who explained that she was forced to live as a fourth-class citizen in Egypt. (Christian women rank behind Muslim males, Muslim females, and Christian males in such objectively stratified cultures. Surely, that reality is a far-cry from the constant grumbling about “patriarchal values in our own society, where females outnumber males in most post-graduate studies.)

As the article notes, there was great good in being there, seeing how many people see through the media distortions about the real victims around the world, but there was a significant disconnect as well, related to the Larger Narrative in which we're privileged to participate. [Read it all.]

Islam and adultery (Egyptian law)

 

After watching, consider these points:

• while Islam claims that adultery must be proven by the "four witness" rule (which refers to this defining anecdote) I find it stunning that one man can be four witnesses alone simply by swearing the same thing four times -- surely rational people must take issue with such an interpretation (even of an already onerous law);
• there seems to be no real argument about murder as a reasonable response to adultery, whereas most of the world would consider it an over-reaction. His dispassionate explanation made one wonder if the anger of the husband was jealousy founded on betrayed love or a natural reaction to the sullying of his property, the property to which he had sole right of intimacy;
• his ludicrous explanation that notifications of subsequent marriages might get lost in the mail made a mockery of the law that husband's must notify their wives first; and notification is very different than attaining permission, which the Muslimas on the set seemed to think was proper before adding new wives to a "family."
• the parsing of killing "on the spot" and killing an hour later is still subject to the husband's interpretation, for the "other man" caught in the act certainly isn't going to stick around to give police a time-table;
• the fact that a legal system codifies such details betrays the fact that such incidents are widespread and subject to much discussion over the just response to adultery -- on the part of wives; furthermore, the fact that women have no such codes to protect them remind us that polygamy and male-initiated divorce make her ability to love and trust her husband extremely difficult, if not impossible.

As for the show, I find it interesting to see the various outfits on the women, who must have been chosen to represent different segments of the population. The premise must make for lively exchanges and great ratings, especially by inviting hard-line imams to propose such outlanding readings of their faith.

There is no coercion in love

A key element of the account of God’s intervention in human history is that his plan depended on Mary’s cooperation. So many works of art and literature try to capture the celestial anticipation that hinged on her response to the angel’s invitation to become the mother of the Messiah – because this event perfectly revealed the nature of God’s respectful interaction with his creatures. A person cannot be coerced into action, for to do so would undermine the freedom that lies at the heart of our human dignity. Just as Jesus freely chose to act on our behalf through his incarnation and the suffering it required, each human person is invited into a relationship with God.

Jesus’ conception itself requires an act of faith that infinitely transcends that of Abraham (and especially that of Sarah, who laughed in her unbelief). The Word of God who wills to take flesh in Mary needs a receptive Yes that is spoken with the whole person, spirit and body, with absolutely no (even unconscious) restrictions, that offers the entirety of human nature as a locus for the Incarnation (vonBalthasar, Mary: The Church at the Source, p. 104).

Elsewhere, Augustine was more concise in his explanation: “He who created you without you did not wish to redeem you without you" (ibid. p. 84).

Since all generations indeed have called her blessed, which she intimated in her Magnificat, it would be good to ask why. What is it that she did that led to centuries of praise and gratitude? We honour her for the freedom in which she responded to the personal invitation of the angel, which represented the Yes of all creation to the will of God.

Mary is the believing other whom God calls. As such she represents the creation, which is called to respond to God, and the freedom of the creature, which does not lose its integrity in love but attains completion therein. Mary thus represents saved and liberated man, but she does so precisely as a woman, that is, in the bodily determinateness that that is inseparable from man: “Male and female he created them” (Ibid, p. 31).

In the Islamic account of the Annunciation, Mary's conversation with the angel is problematic--being long and complex, and divided into various fragments throughout the Quran, which make it hard to understand. And yet, for all the details (and there are so many, including apochryphal accounts of her son) there is one thing entirely missing – Mary's consent!  According to Muhammed: “She said: My Lord! How can I have a child when no mortal hath touched me? He said: So (it will be). Allah created what He will. If He decreeth a thing, He saith unto it only, Be! And it is (Surah III, 47).

Thus Mary’s fiat (her consent) is completely removed from salvation history and God’s will is foisted upon her. Being unequal to men in dignity, Mary's encounter is typical of all Muslim women, whose major decisions are made by their guardians – fathers, brothers, husbands and sons. Christians rejoice in Mary's fiat because it was decisive on the human level for the accomplishment of the divine mystery. In fact the Fathers of the Church teach us that she conceived this Son in her mind before she conceived him in her womb: precisely in faith!

With her fiat, Mary becomes the authentic subject of that union with God which was realized in the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, who is of one substance with the Father. All of God's action in human history at all times respects the free will of the human "I." And such was the case with the Annunciation at Nazareth (Mulieris Dignitatem, 4).

Kindly, reflect carefully on whether Islam will ever allow women this dignity, this freedom and this spiritual responsibility in their pilgimage of faith. Only as such are they entirely human, and completely capable of an authentic and personal relationship with their God and Creator. Happy New Year!