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About religion, woman and freedom of speech

Do you think religion oppress woman freedoms?


  • Total voters
    4
  • Poll closed .

stan1990

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During a conference held in the city of Montreal, Quebec dated July-1990, Dr. Nawal Saadawi, a famous Egyptian feminist, received furious reaction for her comments on women rights in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Dr. Nawal attacked the Patriarchal Doctrines of the three major religions and its restrictive elements against a woman. The barrage of criticism was extended aftermath in different media outlets. It reveals the colossal ignorance mentality and attitude in the western world toward Islam and women rights to be more specific. This mentality and attitude attributed to the strong tendency among many Western thinkers, Think Tanks and politicians to scapegoat Islam for tradition that it’s many parts of the West own heritage and culture. People in the West, in general, hold negative views about many aspects of Islam including woman subordination. The reason is deceptive media standing behind the wave of anti-Islamic sentiments through one-sided T.V programs, books, articles and so on.

I oppose veil on security and rational grounds. The veil prevents the regular interaction between a woman and its surroundings, while headscarf became more of culture and tradition. The veil is questionable among Muslim jurists, On one side, Muslim women can reveal their face during prayers and pilgrimage. while on the other hand, some jurist declares it mandatory. Images of Mary, the mother of Jesus, portray her wearing a headscarf. Christian nuns appeared with their headscarf, and the Haredi which is an ultra-orthodox sect of Judaism force their women to follow a strict dress code including the veil and black garment cover the body from head to toe. Veil and headscarf are part of freedoms which granted by liberated and secularist West.

It is a fact not a fiction that discrimination against people based on their skin color, ethnic or religious background is bigotry against humanity and all of the human race. A Muslim girl in France, the land of Voltaire, was denied her education, basic human right because she was wearing the headscarf. President John F. Kennedy sends the national guard to Alabama against governor George Wallace refusing to comply to a federal court order allowing two African-American students to register for the summer session at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. That Muslim girl and the same like cases received no help and no media attention. European governments denied citizenship for Muslims based on religious grounds such as refusing to shake hands or a father refuse his daughters to participate in swimming lessons at their school. I know many people don’t shake hands with others because they are germophobic, paranoid about their health. Others don’t like swimming because of they afraid of the water. It is coincident that these girls were Muslims, so what? I saw several pictures for Catholic nuns wearing traditional dress, swimming in pools and beaches without raising the attention or excitement of anybody, without locals chasing them angry or armed police terrorizing them to take off few pieces of clothes because the locals are scared.

Dr. Nawal Saadawi isn’t only famous in the ranks of the Egyptian women's movement but is also passionate about secularism and criticism of religions. The participants in this conference in Montreal were unable to bear criticism because the truth is much greater than their ability to absorb it. The problem lies in the extremist religious sects that they can not survive outside their glass bubble. Radical Muslims also do not accept criticism same as conservative Christians and ultra-orthodox Jewish. The point of discussion isn't about Islam is right, Christianity is wrong or that Judaism is better than both. It is all about rationality, logic and the search for the right data. However, many prefer to ignore historical facts and become bias in a way that doesn't serve the scientific method that should be the goal of all researchers and thinkers.
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One of the purposes of organized religion is to discourage license; to that end the restriction of freedom appears to be necessary.
 
I said no, because my faith doesn't. But there are many who do.
 
I said no, because my faith doesn't. But there are many who do.

Ya, this isn't a yes / no answer. Some do, some don't. "Religion" is too big an umbrella to get a clear picture.
 
Traditional Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all incompatible with feminism, yes. I assume that's what you mean by "oppression of women".
 
The Catholic church certainly sees women as holding a 'different' role, but it only really barred them from one position, which was the papacy, and that is because they are incapable of priesthood. But Abbesses were considered 'princes of the Church' even in the Middle Ages, which meant that they held the maximum authority which a leader of the church could hold over secular life. There were even abbesses who held authority over men, like in Fontevraud Abbey. This was a medieval monastery in the Loire Valley of France. It was founded by a man, and contained both a female and male monastic population. These populations were segregated by gender, but both men and women were subjugated to the authority of the Abbess. The same applied to other dual monasteries, like Barking Abbey in England. The abbesses were even exempted from following the authority of Bishops, most famously under Caesarius of Arles, as it was seen as a possible corrupting influence on them.

The influence of these Abbesses really cannot be underestimated. The monastic institutions of Europe controlled education and literature, and were immensely influential. Germany was only civilized because Celtic monastics moved there en masse and educated them; monasteries very often transformed entire cultures. This is all very little known history; partly because modern Catholicism seems to have developed a bizarre distaste for its rich history of asceticism, seeing it as 'old fashioned', and because people see the basic ascetic requirements for spiritual authority in the Church to be 'oppressive'.
 

Dr. Nawal Saadawi isn’t only famous in the ranks of the Egyptian women's movement but is also passionate about secularism and criticism of religions. The participants in this conference in Montreal were unable to bear criticism because the truth is much greater than their ability to absorb it. The problem lies in the extremist religious sects that they can not survive outside their glass bubble. Radical Muslims also do not accept criticism same as conservative Christians and ultra-orthodox Jewish. The point of discussion isn't about Islam is right, Christianity is wrong or that Judaism is better than both. It is all about rationality, logic and the search for the right data. However, many prefer to ignore historical facts and become bias in a way that doesn't serve the scientific method that should be the goal of all researchers and thinkers.
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This is about religion. A belief based on a God/gods. I don't think we can really impose something secular and man-made, to a religious doctrine. You might find this article from a Christian POV, interesting.


What does the Bible say about women’s rights?


What we know from Scripture is that God created woman as a complement and a gift to man (Genesis 2:18, 22). She is to be treasured, protected, and selflessly served the way Christ loves and serves His church (Ephesians 5:25–30; 1 Peter 3:7). But fallen man, acting according to his sinful flesh, perverts what God creates. Over time, God’s ideal for the woman was shattered, and she became little more than a sexual object, baby-bearer, and slave to the man. This was not God’s plan, just as war, disease, and suffering were not His plan. But God allows humankind free will to choose whether to honor His commands or defy them; however, consequences come with either choice. One consequence that resulted from man’s misuse of the woman God gave him is that one-half of His image (Genesis 1:27) has been abused, subjugated, disrespected, and violated throughout history.

The following is a list of rights God gave women:

1. A woman has the right to be treated as a woman the way God designed her. In other words, no one has the “right” to force a woman to behave as a man and defy her God-given gender. God placed beauty and grace in the female soul different from the characteristics He gave men (Deuteronomy 22:5). A woman who cannot accept her design as a female needs to be loved, counseled, and shown what it truly means to be a woman. Lesbianism and gender-reassignment surgeries are not solutions God endorses.

2. A woman has the right to nurture and protect her own baby growing inside her body. No one has the right to force a woman to abort her child, and, by the same token, no woman has the right to force her baby’s death (Psalm 139:13).

3. A woman has the right to flourish and grow within the boundaries God created for her, just as men do. Men do not have the right to inhibit that growth and freedom, as has been done in the past and is still practiced in many parts of the world (Colossians 3:19).

4. A woman has the right to fair treatment because women are “joint heirs of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7). This includes equal opportunities to own property (Proverbs 31:16), receive an education, make personal decisions for herself, receive equal pay for equal work (Deuteronomy 24:17), and marry or not marry as she chooses (Numbers 36:6).

5. A woman has the right to serve the Lord according to her gifts and within the boundaries God set for His church (Titus 2:3–5; 1 Timothy 3:11).

6. A woman has the right to compete on an equal level with a man for opportunities not related to gender. However, to expect business and institutions to alter their standards so that women have a better chance is not equality at all. (For example, gender may prohibit a 4'6," 110-lb. woman from being hired for a heavy construction job.) Gender should never be a consideration for college admissions, medical school, or the business world because a woman’s feminine qualities in no way affect her performance.

7. A woman has a right to everything a man claims as his right, while honoring the God-given distinctions between the sexes (Galatians 3:28). Neither gender nor race should ever be used as an excuse to oppress or exclude a person from anything God allows.

When the phrase women’s rights agrees with the rights God instituted when He designed the woman, then the Bible fully supports those rights. When that term is hijacked to include evil that God never endorsed, then those so-called “rights” are not rights at all.

Recommended Resource: Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth: An Analysis of More Than 100 Disputed Questions by Wayne Grudem
What does the Bible say about women’s rights?
 
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