It’s been a while since my last column, but I am feeling rather inspired to rant about something significant and controversial: religion.
It is in the current climate of political change and global modernization that fundamentalism has taken such a strong hold on certain people and parts of the world.’ Whether it is Christian or Islamic, fundamentalism is a backlash against change: against the evolution of society.’ It preaches a return to a mythical golden age where none of the current evils existed.’ It encourages militant opposition to change and more firmly entrenches the privileged class of males in their beliefs of superiority.
Fundamentalism is the bastion of the inferiority complex in men (the clerics and leaders are almost always men) who feel they cannot live up to modern expectations and so revert back to the simplicity they perceive in their grandparents’ generation. Fundamentalism is fueled by the rage of the disenfranchised, the boys who cannot rule the world as their fathers did,’ who have no job skills and no access to social advancement,’ and who have no homes to call castles and no wives to act as feudal serfs.’ It is the previously-privileged watching their influence being eroded by Western politicians, transnational corporations and democratic propaganda who seek something, anything, to control.’ So they reinterpret and distort the religious texts (both the Bible and the Quran) and preach fundamentalism and male supremacy.’ A man who is powerless can only feel dominant by oppressing those with even less power: the women, children, and minorities.
Ask any scholar on Islam and they will tell you that fundamentalists are not following Islam. There are no tenets requiring women to wear burqas, nor is every man required to grow a beard.’ The Quran holds women and men as equals.’ Women become subhuman chattel only through misinterpretation of the Quran.’ The misinterpretation of the Quran has given rise to several cultures based upon patriarchal extremism and the subjugation of women.’ It is not that these cultures are innately Islamic, they are only incidentally so.’ Religion can be used to justify nearly any behavior or social structure.’ Even though the Quran was written by men in a time of male domination, it is more egalitarian than many contemporary Islamic states are willing to admit.’ The past century has seen a rebirth of fundamentalist male domination in Muslim nations, and the increasingly visible repression of women around the globe.
There is growing pressure placed on Islamic nations by the international community to stop human rights abuses and respect female equality.’ This pressure engenders a binary set of reactions. On the one hand, it accomplishes its goal. Some nations have modernized their legal systems and worked to give women equal rights. On the opposite extreme are countries that reassert their fundamentalist beliefs and claim that international law has no bearing on cultural tradition.’ This argument for cultural relativism is made by those in positions of power in order to maintain their influence.’
The majority of the people in these countries would prefer human rights guarantees and an opportunity to improve their political and economic conditions.’ Cultural relativism is a glib argument made by the few to justify the oppression of the many based upon tenets and practices often no more than a few decades, not centuries, old.’ Besides, many have tried, and all have failed to fight the future. Power lies in shaping cultural evolution, not in reverting to the dark ages.
