From the Buddhist point of view, all phenomena are conditioned, i.e. they arise, carry on, and come to an end because of other phenomena. Buddhism does not look at anything we experience as “things”, but rather as processes.
Confusion arises due to various factors, chief among them : 1) vague sense of “ego”, and 2) language. The vague sense of ego is portrayed in Khemaka Sutta as the last delusion that a monk drops before getting Enlightened, so we won’t worry about it now. Where language is concerned, Buddhism stands on similar positions to those of postmodernism and feminism, i.e. our social world is defined by how we speak about it. One can say that we actually create society by the act of speaking.
I don’t know why this came to me as the discussion I want to have in blog form today, but here you go–
Imam al-Ghazzali (d. 1111) said that Allah (God) only stops forgiving when the believer stops asking for forgiveness. This is the crux of the Islamic view of divine forgiveness. Start with the fact that we have NO FALL story, because despite mis-conduct in the Garden, Adam and Eve ASKED for and were granted forgiveness. Thus, they leave without the mark of some eternal “original sin.” They live as we all do, here on earth, not as some punishment but because that is where they were intended to live in the first place. The creation story in Islam describes human creation as per a primordial conversation between the Creator and the unseen creatures known as angels, when God says, “Indeed, I will create ON THE EARTH a khalifah (moral agent, vice-regent of God).”
Thus, the relationship between divine forgiveness and human sin or error is fixed in a dialectic where sin and error might be part and parcel of the human being but likewise forgiveness is part and parcel of the Divine Creator. In fact, the language used is telling. Taubah, which is also translated as forgiveness, means “returning to the original place/station.” Our original place is at one with the Creator, and we are in that station in harmony with all of creation ~ a sort of cosmic bliss. When we err, we fall away from our true nature and the nature of the entire universe so must return to realign ourselves with this cosmic harmony… and everything will be alright. Continue reading “Forgiveness (is a two-way street) by amina wadud”
The headlines blared, “Who am I to judge?” News outlet after news outlet led with the pope’s conciliatory stance toward gays, expressed during an interview aboard the pope-plane as he returned from Brazil. Among the several headers from Fox News (I encourage not clicking!), we find discussions of the pope’s “reaching out” to gays and even one that combines this development with his “urging” of a “greater role” for women. The New York Times story introduced the pope’s comments as follows: “For generations, homosexuality has largely been a taboo topic for the Vatican, ignored altogether or treated as ‘an intrinsic moral evil,’ in the words of the previous pope.” Ignoring the astonishing comment that this has been the case “for generations,” as though homosexuality has historically been the kind of issue for the church it has become in the wake of radical queer movements – see Mark Jordan’sseveralbooks on this for the most helpful treatments – the story went on to say that the pope’s comments “resonated throughout the church.” Although the NYT article did a better job than some contextualizing and nuancing the pope’s comments, they were still termed “revolutionary” in an assessment better suited to an opinion page than to a news report. Better-informed commentators, such as James Martin, offered a measured response. Martin said that although the pope’s remarks didn’t really signal a significant change in policy, “in the church, style often proves substantial,” implying that the “pastoral” tone might have effects in the implementation of policy. More significantly, Martin praised the pope’s adherence to Jesus’ injunction not to judge as an instance, first and foremost, of the pope’s commitment to mercy as the hallmark of his pontificate.
My Facebook feed, predictably, lit up with links to and discussions of these comments. While most were thrilled, a few posts noted that, even if Pope Francis is in fact (which is not proven) walking back Benedict XVI’s language of “intrinsically disordered,” the church’s policy has not and will not change in any significant way. What was missing in all but a few instances was attention to the pope’s comments in the same interview on women, and the deep theological problems with the assumptions contained in those comments. And while I, as a queer theologian, would never wish to downplay the struggles of LGBTQI people in the Roman Catholic church, there are rather more women than queers in that church (as elsewhere!). What’s more, it is arguable that it is the sexism and heterosexism of what Marcella Althaus-Reid memorably termed “T-Theology” that underlies condemnation of homosexuality in Roman Catholic theology. Continue reading “Who is the Church? by Linn Marie Tonstad”
It is difficult to carve out time in a course that covers Christianity from the past 2000 years to address material beyond the standard textbooks. But yet, I must because the visual and material culture, the worship practices, and the daily activities of women and men who have called themselves Christians or followers of Christ throughout history also comprise the story of the Christian heritage.
Over the past several weeks, I have been developing material for a historical and theological survey course called “The Christian Heritage.” In the multiple sections of this course taught at my university, and I imagine similarly at schools across the country, students are assigned a course reader. The reader we use is a collection of texts that have shaped the Christian faith from the first century to the 21st. It is a good collection, and I have no objection to using it. However, for the way I would like to teach the course, I will need to supplement the reader with other material. I have two interrelated concerns: the reliance on texts as a way of determining theological history and the absence of women in that history before the medieval period (and even then the number of women included is small). Continue reading “Women’s Christian Heritage by Elise M. Edwards”
This year marks the fifth anniversary of the publication of Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life, edited by Caroline Grant and Elrena Evans. I contributed a chapter. A few days ago, I was contacted by the editors and asked for an update. “What had changed for me in five years?” they asked. As I tried to respond to their questions, I was surprised by the gravity in my heart. When I wrote about motherhood and life as a professional theologian five years earlier, I was a new mother, applying for my third-year review, and trying to navigate my nascent roles as both mom and scholar/educator. I felt overwhelmed to be sure, but I was overtly grateful to have such a rich and full array of choices about how I lived my life. Here, a few years later, I am applying for full-professorship. I am a more seasoned mother with two healthy children. I chair two departments at my school, and I am generally more established in the many things I juggle simultaneously. Had I given it any consideration, I would have anticipated a more cheerful five-year check-in. Continue reading “To Dust and Ashes by Natalie Weaver”
Prompted by a dear friend of mine during the new moon, last month I set an intention to “clean my house.” This intention does, to a degree, involve the actual “house,” aka, apartment in which I live. Great—fantastic even, and no problem at all! I actually love to clean, particularly cleaning out closets, garages, cupboard or really, any space where junk can be hidden away, brought into the open, sorted and organized. I’m really not joking. I tell people this, and they laugh and say, “oh, I should have you come clean at my house.” Seriously—do. I am still waiting for several invitations.
But meditatively speaking and in dreams, one’s “house,” is often one’s self and one’s physical body in particular. This work has been a bit more challenging to me. As I shared in my January post, I have been working this year to “create a healthier relationship to food in at least one way,” which also involves creating a healthier relationship with my body altogether, physical, spiritual, mental and emotional.
One reason I began to practice yoga and meditation was so that I could learn to better care for my body. Feminism teaches me to reclaim embodiment and value physical bodies more, and yoga teaches me to incorporate what I learn in a highly physical way. In yoga, I also found a safer place to access what I consider sacred and divine by approaching it primarily in my body while my mind and emotions unlearned an abusive relationship to God. I have even searched my “house” once before through active meditation and visualization. It was extremely powerful. I fixed broken locks. I gave people back items I didn’t even know I had been storing for them. I also realized that I was not ready to open some doors. The process was fun and very rewarding, involving almost two hours of seated meditation.
Yet, I have also struggled to maintain this practice. I felt very disconnected from myself before the new moon last month and hadn’t wanted to meditate. I wanted a vacation from embodiment and myself. Embodiment, after all, often demands that we actually hear what our bodies are trying to tell us. Honestly, I don’t always want to listen. When I have too much work to do, I don’t want to know that I am tired. When I am anxious, I would rather feel in control. I knew, however, cognitively, that “cleaning my house,” would be good for me so I made myself set the intention. I pushed myself to carve out moments in passing during the day to focus my mind and tell me what I wanted to do. I then proceeded to have four powerful dreams in the week following this intention-setting, all related to my “house.” In the final dream, I spoke to me, literally. I faced myself and said very assertively, “You need to work with what you have.” Continue reading “Cleaning My “House” by Sara Frykenberg”
Recently a controversy broke out surrounding a University talk I was to give in Tamil Nadhu, here in India. That visit was to include a workshop and several meetings, including one with the all women Jamaat or STEP – the first of its kind in the context of the male dominated personal status law scenario in India).
This is how the events unfolded: Before I came to India last year, I began communications with various Non-Government Organizations on gender and justice in Islam and with academics or others related to the study of Islam. At that time an invitation to visit Madras University was extended to me. It took the better part of the year to get the details sorted out. Meanwhile, I traveled throughout India, spoke at about a dozen Universities and several community organizations (including mosques), and started a book club discussing reformist Islam with interested persons in Kerala. Continue reading “Why I Try to Stay Away From the Media by amina wadud”
Part of my research is focused on how the social sciences relate to “religion” and religious studies. More specifically, I spend time examining the sociology of religion. I look at stats, demographics, and polls. I look at rates of attendance, frequency of prayer, levels of “religiosity,” apostates (or the less religiously-loaded term “exiters”), and political outlooks. I also look at how bias this area of study is in favor of religion. One facet of this work that has always interested me, is the differences in “gender” and “sex” as they relate to religious beliefs and observances. Accepting the fact that there are spectrums of sex, gender, and identity, and the presence of difficult philosophical questions surrounding self-identification and the limits of labels, some really interesting facts and statistics crop up time and time again. In what follows I will lay out a couple of these interesting facts, along with some thoughts on them: Continue reading “5 Interesting Facts about Women and Religion by Kile Jones”
While Islam has undoubtedly granted women many rights—some of which were radical for much of the world in the 7th century, such as the rights to divorce, consent in marriage, education, and financial independence—many Muslim women around the world are denied those rights in practice. That these rights were “radical” for the 7th century is significant: one would think that this is an indication that our rights should be “radical” in all times. What Islamic feminism does is to help us deal with this tension of the existence of women’s rights in theory but their denial in practice.
I understand Islamic feminism to be a response to the mistreatment of Muslim women, whose rights have been marginalized, or completely denied, because of interpretations of Islam that do not acknowledge their full humanity and view them as inferior to men; Islamic feminism therefore requires re-visiting the Qur’an to re-interpret it from a standpoint that does not favor any one gender over another and sees all as equally valuable. Needless to say, Islamic feminism, or any other form of feminism, does not claim that women and men are “the same”; men and women need not be the same in order to be viewed as and treated equally and fairly. Continue reading “Why I am an Islamic Feminist by Shehnaz Haqqani”
Haraam [Sin]; cover yourself! Be free; show some skin!
AstaghfirAllah [seeking forgiveness from God]; aren’t you ashamed?! Damn, aren’t you hot in that?!
The Muslim woman’s body feels like a battleground with essentialized feminism on one side (covered in Part I) and patriarchy on the other. Both sides have Muslim women on their team, but both sides also harm and silence them. This second part deals with “Team Haraaminator.”
The Haraaminators are kind of like “Daddy Longlegs” or “Momma Longreaches” who hold their wives, daughters, sisters, and even extended sisters in faith close to the chest with their long-legged grips. They come in the male and female variety. They believe that all women should be covered and wearing at least a headscarf. They speak with authority about the headscarf and how important it is for a woman in her pursuit of piety, virtue, modesty, chastity, and heaven. Some allow questioning the headscarf while others take it as a decree from Allah that should never be interrogated. Many use the Qur’an and ahadith (prophetic sayings and doings) to arrive at their opinions while other haraaminators just go by what their shaykh, imam, father, mother, friend or others have told them is the Islamic ruling on the headscarf. Continue reading “Tug-of-Warring over the Female Body (Part 2 of 2) by Jameelah X. Medina”
From the Buddhist point of view, all phenomena are conditioned, i.e. they arise, carry on, and come to an end because of other phenomena. Buddhism does not look at anything we experience as “things”, but rather as processes.
Feminism and Religion 