In actual fact the unrestricted freedom experienced by women
in the western world has only served to lead that society into a state of
chaos and disruption. Indeed, the scenes now being enacted there are
in protest against the anarchic situation created by Christian doctrine
itself. Even the most fanatical of Christian missionaries would hardly
endorse the statement that the freedom enjoyed by them owes itself
to Christian doctrine. Christian intellectuals are now engaged in thinking
out ways and means to extricate western civilization from the confines
of immorality. They have now recognized the fact that salvation through
the death on the cross can hardly be employed to practically cleanse
people of their sins. This would then mean that they themselves have
admitted that the freedom of western women cannot be the product
of Christian dogma. In truth, therefore, the people of the west began
to move away from established values in protest, and as a response, to
the world renunciation of Christian ascetism.
The Christian religion had but followed the Jewish principles.
No new belief, no ritual or code of morality can be seen to have been
taught by Christ. Christ had only claimed that he was a prophet sent
unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel (Mathew 15:25). He had
said that he was sent only to fulfill the code of the Old Testament
(Mathew 5:17). This meant that he was a prophet appointed to guide
the Israelites along the path of God. He had advised the people to
follow the laws revealed to Moses. Indeed, in the first centuries (after
the departure of Christ) the church had no rites or rituals, whatsoever,
which differed from those of the Jews in any manner; nor was there
any such law either.
It is the Jewish belief that the woman is the cause of sin entering
amongst mankind. The woman was, after all, the one who ate of the
forbidden fruit herself and then persuaded her mate to eat it too
(Genesis 3:12). She was the sinner who not only disobeyed God herself
but caused another to disobey as well. With the Christian adaptation
of this idea, she became, through her opening the door for sin, doomed
to carry the burden of guilt for having become the immediate cause of
the gruesome ordeal of the son of God which led to his death on the
cross.
The Hebrew term Baal means owner. The Old Testament of
the Bible refers to man as Baal. We see that according to the
commandments of the Old Testament, man is portrayed as one who
has total authority over woman. Indeed, the Bible has given man the
permission to even sell of his women - even if they were to be his own
daughters (Genesis 21:7). Among the Jews there was even the tradition
of selling off their own daughters at the slave market in order to repay
their debts (Nehemiah 5:5). Even in the matter of religious practice,
the Jews never granted women the freedom to act freely. The Book
of Numbers ruled that man had the authority to nullify the vows taken
up by his daughter or wife (30:12). That the wife was mentioned
together with slaves and domestic animals in the Ten Commandments
(Exodus 20:17, Deuteronomy 5:21) is an indication of the position of
woman amongst the Jews.
The Jews had looked upon the birth of a female child with
contempt. It was the law that if the mother gave birth to a female
child, she would be in a state of impurity for a period of time that
would be twice as long as the case if the child born was male (Leviticus
12:15). The ruling of the Old Testament was that woman had only
half the value of man (Leviticus 27:3-7).
Polygamy was universally practiced during the age of the Old
Testament. The Law commanded no restriction, whatsoever, in its
practice. Indeed, Solomon is said to have had seven hundred wives
and three hundred concubines! (I King 11:3). Moreover, according to
the Old Testament, only man had the right to divorce. A man could
divorce his wife at the slightest pretext. Here, he had only to see to it
that he provided her with the written document of divorce. However,
there is no statement, whatsoever, anywhere in the Bible which would
enable woman to free herself from the clutches of even the most
cruel husband (Deuteronomy 24:1-4).
The position of woman in Jewish society at the time of the
advent of Jesus was, indeed, a pathetic one. Women, children and
slaves were not permitted to recite Shema, the morning prayer. In
fact, there was even a Jewish ritual daily prayer that said ‘I praise
God in that He created me not as woman.’ Woman were not permitted
to study the Torah. The Jewish Rabbi, Eliyasar, who lived around 90
C.E. had even opined that it was better to throw women to flames
than to teach them the Torah.
It can be seen that Christ had sincerely striven to bring about a
change in this situation. He gave positions to women amongst his
disciples. Even though there are no women amongst the apostles, we
see that many women attended his sermons. Mary Magdalene,
Yohanna, Susanna ... so goes their list. He had preached the gospel to
all irrespective of the fact whether they were men or women (John
4:1-24). In a Jewish society where it was ordained that there was
nothing for the woman in matter of religion, these steps were all
revolutionary in themselves. Through these steps Christ sought to teach
that both woman as well as man were equal before God.
Even as the church went astray in matters of belief after Jesus,
so did lapses begin to occur in the matter of the position accorded to
woman. The Christians, too, began to follow the prevalent laws of the
Old Jewish Community on matter dealing with woman. With the
assumption of Church authority by Paul, things became even worse.
Furthermore, with the influx of people from among the Greeks into
Christianity, the Christian community now became saturated with the
decadent conceptions on woman prevalent both in the Jewish as well
as the Greek traditions. Sophocles, the Greek philosopher, had said
that “silence is the token of greatness as regards to woman†The
Greeks were never prepared to grant any right, whatsoever, to woman.
That woman was the very personification of the devil was the very
theme popular in those days. At home, woman was not even entitled
to a place at the dining table. She was to ever remain confined to the
living quarters that was specially laid out for her. She was exploited
wholesale in the name of religion. The Greeks too were used to the
habit of ‘donating’ women to the temples. Those who were so ‘donated’
would then be doomed to a life of prostitution and menial jobs that
were associated with the temples. There are records to show that,
like the Devadasis of India, there were around a thousand of such
‘maid-servants of the divine’ in the service of the temple of the god,
Aphrodite, in Corinth. It was natural, therefore, that the Christian church,
which adopted religious laws from the Greeks and the Jews, sought to
enact laws that would violate the sanctity of womanhood.
It is, however, in the epistles of Paul that we see the Christian
seeds of all anti-woman policies often attributed to the Christianity.
This animosity towards woman that pervades the epistles of Paul was
but a natural outcome of his having accepted Greek philosophy as the
very foundation for all his own ideas as well. It is the influence of the
Greek thought that ‘the woman is the very image of the Devil’ that is
evident in the writings of Paul which state to the effect that ‘it is good
for a man not to marry.’ (Corinthians 7:1). It is again the ideas of
Sophacles who said that ‘silence is the token of greatness as regards
the women.’ that is reflected in the words of Paul who said that ‘the
women must observe silence at the church.’ (I Corinthians 14:34-3)
Woman is, indeed, one who demands protection. She is, by her
very nature, so constituted. Womanhood reaches its greatest heights
with pregnancy and child-birth. It is through marriage that woman is
enabled to fulfill all her natural propensities. By teaching that ‘it is
good for a man not to marry’, Paul has propagated a notion that is
wholly antagonistic towards woman: “Are you married? Do not seek
a divorce. Are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife.†(I Corinthians
7:27)
“Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for
them to stay unmarried, as I am.†(I Corinthians 7:8)
“So then, he who marries the virgin does right, but he who does
not marry does even better.†(I Corinthians 7:38)
If all men in the world where to obey Paul and perform the
‘good’ act of not having anything to do with woman, the entire human
race would cease to exist within the span of a single century. It is for
this reason that this Christian notion is said to be antagonistic towards
humanity itself.
It was on the basis of these statements of Paul that Christian
ascetism developed. We are unable, however, to see in the sayings of
Christ anything that would discourage marriage. Nevertheless, we see
that within the span of a few centuries after Christ, ascetism came to
be greatly encouraged and to be accepted as the very foundation of all
Christian virtue during the unfolding of the history of Christianity. The
Devadasi system that prevailed amongst the Greeks, too, must have
had its influence upon the development of Christian ascetism. Ascetism
would have a greater adverse effect on woman than on man. For,
after all, it was through wedlock that womanhood found its highest
fulfillment and perfection.
It is the reflection of the influence of the doctrines of Paul that
were antagonistic towards woman which we witness in the activities
of the medieval church. Indeed, The foremost subject of heated
discussions of the church in those times was whether woman had a
soul or not. The cruelty that was perpetrated in the name of ascetism
went beyond all limits. All this madness was supposedly committed in
order that one may approach the divine through the infliction of torture
upon one’s own self.
It may have been in response to this attitude of the church against
woman as well as against the fulfillment of the sexual instincts that set
the stage for the moral laxity of the western world. As for the Qur'an,
it presents the sexual impulse as a sign of God in itself. Its fulfillment
is but the natural yearning of the human species. Indeed, the Prophet
(e) had taught that the fulfillment of the sexual urge, through the legal
provisions of the divine commandments, was, in itself, an act of
righteousness. As far as man was concerned, woman was then a
partner in this righteous act. But according to the Christian notion that
sexuality is in itself a sin, it is only natural that the woman is seen as
the sinner. The Qur'an, on the other hand, introduces woman as mate
and support.
