Women's LiberationDiscussion led by Melvin McLeod
All the major religions say that men and women have the same essential
nature. Yet in practice these religions are dominated by men. Irshad Manji, Karma Lekshe Tsomo, and Patricia Wittberg discuss the struggles of women in three of the world's major religions.
Shambhala Sun: How would you characterize the views and experiences of women in your religious tradition today? Irshad Manji: I
hear mainly from two quite different groups of Muslim women, and I find
them both in North America and elsewhere. One group is angry and one is
fearful. The first group feels incredibly empowered and is quite angry
that women like me are suggesting that there is oppression within Islam.
A lot of the young women who feel this way wear the hijab on campuses,
more as a political statement than as a spiritual statement. They insist
that this is their choice, and I believe them. They are angry because
they think that people like me are challenging their identity as Muslim
women. The
second group is much less loud than the first group, much more fearful
of persecution. They recognize that something is askew, that something
is not quite right in the Islam that they have been told they must
practice. They tell me they are sickened by the human rights
violations—particularly against women—happening in the name of Allah.
They are tired of sitting in the back, of being told that women cannot
lead prayer, of being lectured to by the men in their lives about why
they must wear the hijab. They’re
looking for a reason to love Islam, but in most cases they are not
finding it. They also don’t believe they have a voice with which to
express themselves. They will write to me: “Thank you for going public
with what we’ve only allowed ourselves to think privately. You’re
helping me find my voice.” But when I write them back to ask what they
plan to do with that voice when they do find it, more often than not
they are too afraid to even contemplate what that might mean for them
and for their faith. Karma Lekshe Tsomo:
Although there are differences depending on what part of the world you
are talking about, in my experience most Buddhist women are content,
even though most are largely disempowered and disenfranchised. Globally,
99 percent of Buddhist women are in Asia. There is a vast difference
between the situations of Asian and Western Buddhist women, in terms of
access to Buddhist education, full ordination, leadership, and so on.
North American Buddhist women have seen much more improvement in these
areas than have Asian women. Even here in North America, there are vast
differences between the situations of Asian Buddhist women,
Asian-American Buddhist women, and what we can call, for lack of a
better term, “non-Asian-American Buddhist women.” But
regardless of which women we focus on, there’s still a lot of work to
be done to ensure women’s equal participation in the Buddhist tradition.
Even in Western dharma centers, we find both tacit and explicit sexism.
There is still a lack of feminist awareness in those centers and some
serious denial about the problems that exist. Surprisingly, many North
American women still prefer male teachers and still prefer to support
men rather than women, and monks rather than nuns. Women in many
Buddhist centers are still working in support roles: cooking, cleaning,
fundraising for men. There’s still plenty of gender discrimination in
North American Buddhist centers, although on the surface women in North
America have many opportunities. Patricia Wittberg:
I will speak largely about Catholic women in the North American
context. Women who are sixty or older are the pillars of the parish.
They get everything done, and they appear to be moderately content. But
there is an undercurrent of discontent you see when a woman rolls her
eyes when we’re talking about men: “Oh, there they go again.” But it
never rises to a level that inhibits them from taking an extremely
active role in their church. Many
women who are forty to sixty, roughly speaking, are “defecting in
place,” and I find this very ominous for Catholicism. They go their own
way. Many women younger than forty are simply leaving. In
a study of American Catholics of different generations that I worked on
at Purdue, we found that the oldest women were more orthodox in their
beliefs and more regular in their prayer and church attendance than men
of their age group. By contrast, the younger women were both less
orthodox in their beliefs—especially about the authority of the Pope and
the clergy, about women’s roles, abortion, contraception, and so
forth—and they were less regular in their spiritual practice. At the
same time, there was a significant portion of the youngest Catholic men
whose beliefs and practices were very orthodox. These
young women are not angry or fearful, as I heard Irshad saying about
young Muslim women. They may come for church services sporadically, but
they take Catholicism on their own terms. Nobody can tell them they’re
not Catholic, but they define what Catholicism means for them. Having
said that, if you had someone here representing an evangelical
Protestant church, you would get a very different average woman. The
picture might look a lot more like the fundamentalist Muslim women
Irshad is talking about, embracing a tradition that, to an outsider,
appears to subordinate them; or what Lekshe was talking about, a
preference for male leadership. Irshad Manji:
It very much concerns me that the kind of fundamentalist women that
Patricia was just talking about are becoming the mainstream within
Islam. Younger women defecting or going their own way is not what is
happening in Islam. I was at a social event at the University of
Maryland recently and a number of hijab-clad,
Muslim college women formed a circle around me and started yelling
scripted speeches about why I was not a Muslim. They differed with each
other only over the best strategy with which to denounce me. This lasted
for about an hour. Afterwards, a number of individual Muslim women,
some in hijab and some not,
came up to me to say, “I just wanted to let you know, I really
appreciated your coming to campus, what you said, and the fact that you
withstood everything that was hurled against you.” The
separation of these two groups saddened me. They did not feel that they
were in a position to engage in debate and dissent with their Muslim
sisters, right there on the spot. At least the disaffected Catholic
women are able to be open in their dissent. Shambhala Sun: Given
that you all say that women are excluded to greater or lesser extent
from full participation in their spiritual communities, what does the
doctrine itself have to say about women and spirituality? Karma Lekshe Tsomo: The
Buddhist traditions are proud to say that women have equal
opportunities for enlightenment, if they should so choose. The purpose
of all Buddhist practice—whether in the form of meditation, study, or
ritual—is transformation of consciousness, and consciousness has no
gender. In theory, at least, women have equal opportunities to reach the
highest goals of the Buddhist tradition. In fact, there were many great teachers at the time of the Buddha, thousands of women who attained liberation, who became arhats,
and we can point to a number of women Buddhist teachers throughout
history. But after the death of the Buddha, it seems that traditional
preferences for men reasserted themselves. Of course, that was common in
the India of that time. The Buddha made some remarkable changes for
women by asserting that women have equal spiritual potential and
allowing them into the sangha, the monastic community. He famously
hesitated three times, though, before doing so, and the reasons for his
hesitation are widely debated. Why did the Buddha hesitate? Was it
simply because he was a product of a very male-dominated culture? In the
end we can say that he made advances for women and clearly affirmed
women’s equal spiritual potential, as he had for members of all castes. In
theory, then, Buddhism has at its foundation an egalitarian framework.
In practice, however, most Buddhist women do not have equal opportunity.
Of the estimated three hundred million Buddhist women internationally,
99 percent do not have equal opportunities for Buddhist education,
meditation training, or ordination. Most are not encouraged to practice
intensively or to develop as teachers of buddhadharma. In fact, many are
struggling even to get adequate nutrition, education, and health care
for themselves and their families. Many of them lack access to literacy
and the basics of Buddhist education. This situation has been recognized
by a number of people and many improvements are under way, but much
remains to be done. Patricia Wittberg:
It could probably be said of our three religions equally that the
founding figure was much more accommodating of women than the society
and culture that has grown up around those religious traditions. Muslim
women I know have said that Mohammed was much more accepting of women
than the Muslim faith, and even the Koran itself. The same thing can be
said of Christianity. Christianity
was unusual in the early centuries of its development in the relative
equality accorded women. According to the writings of the time—some of
which are now in the canonical Christian scriptures, others what we
would simply call early writings—women served as teachers. They famously
taught one of the early Christians, Apollus. Paul supposedly named some
of them, including Priscilla, for example, as apostles—coworkers on an
equal footing with him. But again, what happens, just as Lekshe said, is
that as the centuries go on the tradition gets subsumed into larger
social patterns that devalue women. Irshad Manji:
Patricia is absolutely right to point out that there are remarkable
parallels in what the respective prophets, or messengers, of these
religions affirmed about women. Mohammed’s first wife, Khadiga, proposed
marriage to him; she was a wealthy self-made merchant for whom he
worked for many years. Ayish, the Prophet’s last wife, whom he married
after Khadiga died, is quietly regarded by many Muslims as the real
successor to the Prophet, because she made many important decisions, not
just behind the scenes but also on the battlefield. There was also
Rabiah, a Sufi mystic, who was offered her choice of suitors. After
interviewing the smartest among these potential suitors, she decided she
didn’t need a husband to be fulfilled. She chose to remain single,
which the Koran unequivocally gives Muslim women the right to do, even
though they would be hard-pressed to find that out from their imams and
mullahs. Unfortunately, so many Muslim women are illiterate that they
would not be able to find out for themselves that such a right exists in
the Koran. In his farewell sermon, the Prophet declared women to be the
partners, rather than possessions, of men. Mohammed was, then, even by
today’s standard, quite a feminist, but his feminism got lost in the
welter of cultural assumptions that were made after he died. Shambhala Sun: Should
women assert their rights in their religion aggressively, or work more
quietly, so as not to invite a harsh and damaging backlash? Irshad Manji:
Stirring things up can make things happen. Recently, in New York, a
group of young Muslims known as the Progressive Muslim Union organized
the first-ever mixed-gender Friday prayer in Islamic history, and it was
led by a woman. She has been roundly condemned by the Muslim
establishment around the world, but the debate has been joined. As
Salman Rushdie pointed out to me, once you put out a thought, however
vigorously, vehemently, and even violently it is disagreed with, it
cannot be un-thought. Stirring
things up does generate unintended consequences, and some of those
consequences really do hurt people. However, I take my inspiration from
the feminist movement, which asked us to consider how any problem can
get aired, let alone dealt with, unless we are willing to break deadly
silences. Isn’t that, for example, the key to ending violence against
women? Keep
in mind that when Martin Luther King, Jr., went to Birmingham, liberal
clergymen chastised him for creating “needless tension.” After he was
thrown in jail, he wrote the now famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,”
in which he said to his angry fellow-clerics, “…I must confess that I
am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’ I have earnestly opposed violent
tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which
is necessary for growth.” Karma Lekshe Tsomo: I
agree that sometimes it is extremely important to speak out. I do think
there are different ways of doing that, though, and different people,
different women, will necessarily will find their own way of speaking
their own truth. For example, even today, many Buddhist women see the
problem but very few are speaking out. And those who speak out often
experience a backlash. But if we had not spoken up, the Buddhist women’s
movement, which started less than twenty years ago, would not even
exist. Things might not have changed for another 2,500 years. The
Buddhist women’s movement has been criticized for bringing attention to
inequality in the Buddhist tradition, because everyone likes to assume
that women have equal opportunities in Buddhism. But we see with our own
eyes that they don’t. We should not allow ourselves to be intimidated
or silenced. The Buddhist concept of applying skillful means in order to
effect change in a compassionate way is helpful in this regard, because
there are occasions when applying certain methods can actually harm our
cause. We had a case in the Buddhist tradition where a couple of people
set the movement back by adamantly demanding too much too soon. Yet, I
still respect people’s freedom to go about effecting change in their own
way. Patricia Wittberg: There’s a wonderful little book called Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States,
by Albert Hirschman. He asks, what are the defining differences between
those who will leave an organization altogether and those who will
stay, and those who will stay and complain? People are performing this
kind of equation all the time with respect to issues that arise in their
institutions, such as women and the priesthood in Catholicism. Those
for whom this is paramount will leave, and those who feel less strongly
about it will stay and choose judiciously when they are going to
complain about it. Irshad Manji: This
takes us back to Lekshe’s point about methods: some are more effective
than others at a given time. I would also say that different methods are
appropriate for different people. Even impatient dissidents like me
play an important role within our faith, because in breaking deadly
silences we create a space in which more moderate, more patient voices
that would otherwise be written off as too radical are seen as much more
legitimate, and worthy of hearing out. Patricia Wittberg: Hirschman
points out that the powers-that-be in any group prefer that its most
dissatisfied members exit, and get out of their hair, rather than stay
and exercise their voice. Irshad Manji: Exactly.
That’s why I have made peace with the fact that someone like me is not
going to be the leader of a reform movement within the mainstream faith.
As a lesbian and a feminist, I will never be, in my lifetime,
legitimate for most Muslims, and that’s fine. But as a result of the
presence of someone like me and the fact that I’m not going to shut up,
those who are regarded as more legitimate can lead the charge for
liberal reform within Islam. Shambhala Sun:
Dr. Wittberg, you mentioned women and the priesthood as an issue that
has divided people within the Church. Where does that issue stand today?
Patricia Wittberg:
Pope John-Paul II came out with an absolute dictum that there would not
be women priests and that no one was to talk about it. Although I am
not privy to the inner workings of the Vatican, I heard that there was
at least one faction that wanted to publish this as an infallible
teaching. So, while the issue was openly discussed for some time, there
has been a squelching of such discussion. There
are also profound geographical differences on this issue, and not only
within Catholicism. The Seventh Day Adventists, who have had female
ministers since the founding of their denomination, are seeing their
ability to ordain women reined in, as representatives from Latin America
and Africa outvote them on this issue. Women Christians in North
America feel it’s a horrible thing when women cannot be ordained,
whereas many women Christians in Latin America and Africa are aghast at
the thought of ordaining women. In
the last few decades, Rome has made the cold and objective calculation
that they would lose more Catholics by ordaining women than not, because
in the parts of the world where Catholicism is growing, it is of a more
conservative variety. And in the United States, the church would lose
prime donors, who are often extremely conservative Catholics who would
be incensed at the thought of ordaining women. During this period, those
who could not abide this policy have left for denominations that were
not too far removed doctrinally. Others stayed to wait for a more
propitious time for the issue to resurface. Shambhala Sun: Given women’s difficulties within your religions, what draws you to the religion and why do you stay? Karma Lekshe Tsomo: I
became a Buddhist as a child, because the Buddhist teachings rang true
for me. I find that the teachings and practices have helped me become a
happier person, a more well-balanced person, and to cope with the
difficulties of life. They provide an ethical framework that helps me to
keep my life simple and peaceful. I find that trying to live in
accordance with the Buddhist teachings helps prevent a lot of problems,
and helps to resolve problems when they arise. I find meditation and the
teachings on wisdom and compassion extremely helpful. At
the same time, the Buddhist tradition gives me the freedom to make my
own ethical decisions. The Buddhist path is a path of inquiry. There is
no dogma we have to accept; there are merely guidelines that we are
asked to verify through our own experience. In Buddhism, you can more or
less take what is useful. You don’t have to buy the whole package. Irshad Manji: Many
young, struggling Muslim women are asking themselves what there is to
love about this faith, not just what there is to follow, absorb, or
identify with. In my own interpretation of the Koran, there is nothing
in it that violates the ideals of a freethinking human being. And key
among those ideals is pluralism of thought. The Koran permits freedom of
exploration for everyone, because anything less undermines God’s
jurisdiction as supreme judge and jury. Such logic is entirely
compatible with the ideal of diversity. But
surely you can celebrate diversity without identifying with a
particular religious tradition, so I’ve had to ask myself, “Why hang on
to religion at all?” Never mind just Islam; why religion at all? Had I
grown up in a Muslim country, chances are I would be an atheist in my
heart, because having religion shoved down my throat would have made me
recoil. But for me, growing up in a materialistic and secular society
like North America, religion is vital. It offers alternative values,
such as discipline, love, and empathy with the poor. I choose religion
because it provides a counterweight to orthodox materialism, and it is
in that tension that I find the incentive to keep thinking, and to keep
growing. Within a secular society, religion can be a prime motivator of
growth. Whereas, ironically, in a society ruled by religion, religion
might just be the incubator of death. Patricia Wittberg: If you leave Islam, they will have won. Irshad Manji: I can only stay if I’m sincere. I can’t stay merely for strategic reasons. Patricia Wittberg: I pray that you stay sincere. Irshad Manji: Right now I’m sincere, but the day it becomes purely a strategic move, that’s when I will have to reconsider. Patricia Wittberg:
I was born Catholic, but I guess one always chooses—or at least ought
to choose—one’s religion as an adult as well, even if you’re born into
it. Otherwise, it remains a child’s religion, and I think that many
people go through their whole life with a child’s religion. I
stay in the church for two reasons. The first one is theological and
philosophic. Max Weber indicated that all religions need to deal with
the fundamental question of why bad things happen to good people, and
religions seem to provide two main answers. One is that you did
something bad in this life or previously. The other is that a human
being could not possibly judge questions of what is ultimately good or
bad, which can only be known by an all-knowing God. Weber went on to say
that Christianity was unique in offering a third answer: we may not
know why bad things happen to people, but we know that God, through
Jesus—the expression of God in our world—took our sufferings and
suffered them too, in solidarity with us. When I first read that, it was
a religious experience for me. I said to myself, “That’s why I’m a
Catholic, that’s why I’m a Christian, that’s why I stay there.” My
second reason is human rather than theological. As a member of a
Catholic religious order, I am continually in the presence of other
sisters. I entered the Sisters of Charity because of other Sisters of
Charity. I liked the way they turned out and I wanted to turn out like
that. And that’s why I stay. Sometimes it doesn’t have much to do with
the official, hierarchical church. In fact, I’ve heard some nuns say if
they could, they’d much rather be a Sister of Charity without being a
Catholic. The Catholic part they’re not too keen on, but the religious
order part they are strongly attracted to. Shambhala Sun: We’ve
talked about differences between North America and the rest of the
world with respect to the role of women in religion. Which of the
changes you see taking place in North America would you like to see
applied globally? Karma Lekshe Tsomo: I
work with Sakyadhita, an international Buddhist organization that
raises issues about women’s roles and opportunities in Buddhism. It
began in 1987 and it has helped to forge new opportunities for women,
especially in Buddhist education, that have been very empowering for
women in Asia and had a major impact on the tradition. The increase in
education and ordination of women in places like Sri Lanka is creating a
new understanding of what women can do, both within their spiritual
traditions and in society at large. Internationally,
Buddhist teachers and Buddhist leaders are almost entirely male. Many
international Buddhist conferences are almost entirely male, but this is
beginning to change. Simply by asking questions—like, Where are the
women lamas? Why are there no women teachers here? Why are there no
fully ordained nuns in this tradition?—over and over again, Western
Buddhist women have gotten people in the Asian establishment starting to
think. But
at the same time there are still thousands of Buddhist women being sold
into sexual slavery, and very little is being done about it. In many
Buddhist societies, women don’t have opportunities for education and
training. Many Buddhist traditions still do not have full ordination for
women. We still have a lot of work to do to make sure that Buddhist
women emerge as teachers and leaders, equal to the number of men. Only
then can we say that Buddhism is truly egalitarian. Sakyadhita
has been a way of linking up women around the world and helping begin a
conversation on how we can learn from each other. For one thing, we in
the West can learn to practice dharma with integrity despite the
consumeristic, mainstream values in American culture. If we encourage
solidarity and community among Buddhist women internationally, it will
bring benefits all around. Patricia Wittberg: Christianity,
of course, has had a missionary complex, going into Asia, Africa, Latin
America, with the idea of “civilizing people,” teaching them the right
way to do things, including how to treat women. That legacy is obviously
very mixed. Because of that colonial history, I feel nervous about
spreading my prescription for what women should do or be across the
world. I
do consider myself a feminist and believe it is important for women to
be freed from the tremendous oppression that they have suffered
worldwide. To the extent that some countries oppress women more than
others, then the particular way they oppress them should be addressed
and challenged. That means everywhere. So while we might look at
oppression of women in South Asia and say, “Look at the terrible way you
are treated,” South Asian women look at the women in the United States
and say, “You’re oppressed by look-ism. You become, basically, a piece
of meat for men to look at and rate.” Women are oppressed in all sorts
of different ways in different countries, and all of these forms of
oppression, gross and subtle, should be challenged. I
have observed that while Catholicism is often seen in North America as a
very retrograde religious tradition—one that does not ordain women and
permanently confines them to less powerful positions—it is not
necessarily viewed that way in other countries. In the United States,
very few women are entering Catholic religious orders. There are about
150 new and very conservative religious orders being founded and they
are overwhelmingly male. In previous ages, across the centuries and
around the world, there have been two or three times as many women
entering religious orders as men. The fact that we are now seeing the
reverse in North America is a strong statement of just how little appeal
the Catholic religious orders have for women in North America at this
time. That
is distinctly not the case in South Asia, in Korea, and in many other
parts of the world. In those places, they can’t build facilities fast
enough to keep up with women who want to enter religious orders. In some
of these countries, if the only other option for women is marriage and
child-rearing—and a relatively unequal marriage at that—Catholicism is
seen as offering an empowering role for women. Since
our record in spreading our faith is marred by colonialism, I would be
reluctant to export North America to other parts of the world. But I’m
all for women in other countries appropriating Catholicism,
appropriating Christianity, within the vernacular of their culture. I
think it does offer some tremendous opportunities for women’s growth,
enlightenment, and empowerment. Irshad Manji:
As Muslims, we have inherited a legacy that tells us that unity
requires uniformity, that debate is division, and division is a crime. A
new generation of Muslims in North America is challenging that, if only
because here we have the freedom to think, express, challenge, and be
challenged, without fear of state reprisal for doing so. Most people in
the Muslim world cannot yet claim that as a right. I
say this not because I think that we have to teach them how to do this.
There was a clamor from interested young people in Muslim countries for
my book to be published in Arabic and posted on the Web. A lot of these
kids want North American Muslims to lead the way because, by whatever
we say in North America, we are helping our Muslim brothers and sisters
in other parts of the world create a climate to say even half of what we
have the freedoms here to express. I’m
also seeing many Muslim women in North America beginning to distinguish
between religion and culture. Here in Canada, there is a proposal in
front of the Ontario government to introduce Sharia courts for Muslim
families. The number-one source of opposition to these courts is Muslim
women themselves. But when they protest Sharia courts, they’re not
demonstrating against Islam, or even the Koran. They’re demonstrating
against the way the Koran will be interpreted in these courts through
the notion of so-called honor. Honor in the Arab cultural tradition
requires women to give up their individuality in order to maintain the
reputation and prospects of the men in their lives. This turns women
into communal property, so that their lives don’t actually belong to
them but to their families, their tribes, and sometimes even their
nations. We’re
seeing these kinds of distinctions between religion and culture being
made in many parts of the Muslim world now, most especially in Morocco,
where just recently the king, after listening to many women’s advocates,
overhauled Sharia law so that today, at least on paper, Moroccan women
have equal access to child custody, alimony, and divorce. Polygamy is
all but abolished. One
other thing I would like to see exported is small business. I would
like to encourage governments around the world to take a sliver of their
defense budgets and pool those monies into a coherent program of
micro-business loans for poor women in Muslim countries. When Muslim
women get these loans, they can start community businesses, earn their
own assets, and use them as they see fit, which they are expressly
permitted to do in the Islamic faith. With those funds, they can become
literate. In Afghanistan, you see signs on some schools that say,
“Educate a boy, and you educate only that boy. But educate a girl and
you educate her entire family.” This is something that women of all
faiths can work together on. It is more concrete than interfaith
dialogue, but nonetheless achieves something that interfaith dialogue is
also meant to achieve. We help people find dignity and we learn about
each other as human beings.
Irshad Manji is the best-selling author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith, which has been published internationally in a number of languages, including Arabic and Urdu.
Karma
Lekshe Tsomo teaches at the University of San Diego and is the editor
of a number of books on Buddhist women and monasticism. She is president
of Sakyadhita: The International Association of Buddhist Women and
director of the Jamyang Foundation, an initiative to provide educational
opportunities for women in the Indian Himalayas.
Patricia
Wittberg has been a member of the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati
since 1966. She teaches sociology of religion and religious
organizations at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. She
is the author of God’s Work, God’s Workers, from Rowman and Littlefield.
Originally published in the July 2005 Shambhala Sun magazine.
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