Monday, January 26, 2009

Monotheism, Misogyny, and Messengers

Leviticus 19:20-22 reads, "And whosoever lieth carnally with a woman, that is a bondmaid, betrothed to an husband, and not at all redeemed, nor freedom given her; she shall be scourged; they shall not be put to death, because she was not free. And he shall bring his trespass offering unto the Lord, into the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, even a ram for a trespass offering. And the priest shall make an atonement for him with the ram of the trespass offering before the Lord for his sin which he hath done; and the sin which he hath done shall be forgiven him."

Where is the equity in these gender-specific punishments? The man yields up a ram for to the meat packing monopoly of the Cohens and the Levites and his sin is forgiven. The slave girl, coerced by her servitude into carnality, is scourged... unforgiven! And even though Jewish scourging was not the sadistic preliminary to crucifixion practiced by the Romans, it made for an unpleasant day. Clearly, this is nothing less than sanctified misogyny.

Jesus opposed misogyny. When the Pharisees asserted their right to divorce their wives under the Mosaic law, Jesus dismissed their argument, remarking that Moses, "For the hardness of your heart, he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore that God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."

This does more than proscribe divorce. Put together with his admonition, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone", Jesus obliterates the foundations of the Mosaic Law.. Oh, by the way, this also points the way to an organic religion growing with the social consciousness of Humanity.

Monotheism penetrated the Arabian peninsula unevenly. By the time of Mohammed (blessings and peace be upon him!), most pagan communities, organized matriarchally, practiced polytheism. Mohammed made it his life work to rectrieve this situation for Allah.

In his last months, Mohammed consolidated his gains by dispatching ambassadors to the far corners of Arabia, inviting/threatening non-believers to Islam. To the Yemen, he sent Mu'adh. A spirited Yemeni woman confronted him: "O companion of God's apostle, what rights has a husband over his wife?" Mu'Adh answered: "Woe to you. A woman can never fulfill her husband's rights, so do your utmost to fulfill his claims as best you can." The woman insisted: "By God! If you are the companion of God's apostle, you must know what rights a husband has over his wife." Mu'adh ejaculated: "If you were to go back and find him with his nostrils running with pus and blood and sucked until you got rid of them, you would not have fulfilled your obligation."

Mohammed later clarified the domestic issue in an address to the men. "You have rights over your wives and they have rights over you. You have the right that they should not defile your bed and they should not behave with open unseemliness. If they do, God allows you to put them in separate rooms and to beat them but not with severity. Lay injunctions on a woman kindly, for they are prisoners with you having no control over their persons. You have taken them as a trust from God, and you have the enjoyment of their persons by the words of God.."

What a deal?