Ann, I'd be particularly interested in your take on this. Seems like it'd be your kind of issue.
Believe me, Pam, I have so many things I'd like to say, which is precisely why I haven't replied yet. I feel I need so much time to formulate everything that I just can't do it right now. But let me try to say a few things, after all.
I think it is true beyond a doubt that that the parts of the world that have the least amount of oppression of women, and the least severe oppression of women, is the western civilization. This is more or less equal to the "Christian" part of the world. (However, I think we might argue that non-Christian Japan belongs to the western civilization, and I don't think that Japan is very oppressive to women at all. Interestingly, Japanese women live longer by far than any other men or women in the world. I think there might be far more bad treatment of women in parts of Christian-dominated South America, and certainly in Christian-dominated Africa.)
All in all, however: if you are a woman and if you had to pick a "religious" part of the world where you had to be "randomly dropped" to live, without knowing if you would be rich or poor or if you'd live in the country or in the city, then I'd say you'd be stupid not to pick the Christian-dominated part of the world. No one can deny that on the whole, that is where living conditions for women are the best.
What religion is the worst for women, though? Is it Islam? It might be, but I'm not absolutely sure. I think very many people in the west are (rightly) scared of the Muslim world, and just because of that we tend to focus on all the worst aspects of that civilization. In other words, if something bad happens to a woman in Africa in the name of the traditional African religion she belongs to, we might shrug. But if the same kind of thing happens to a woman in Afghanistan or Iran or Saudi Arabia in the name of Islam, we may point and stare and recoil in horror.
Indeed, I'm not sure that Islam is
really the worst religion for women. It might be, but I think it might be touch and go. On the whole, nothing horrifies me more than the incredibly large scale mass murder of female fetuses that takes place in India and China when parents in those countries abort their children because they are girls. Also, authorities in those countries do very little to stop this horrible, horrible practice.
Let me say a few words about abortions. It will come as no surprise to most of you that I am for a woman's right to choose. However, I do agree that this is a very complicated question, and I do respect those who are against abortions. I hope you don't want to discuss abortions as such with me. I will not take part in such a debate.
However, to me there is an enormous difference between having an abortion because you feel unable to take care of a child, and having an abortion because you are not prepared to raise a daughter, only a son. The selective killing of girl children, which takes place with the silent acceptance of authorities, is totally horrible to me. And the two countries where this happens the most, India and China, have large Muslim minorities, but they are not Muslim-dominated. I don't think that this sort of systematic mass murder of girl children takes place in Muslim-dominated countries. As a matter of fact, Islam's prophet Muhammed explicitly forbade Muslim parents to kill their children. Muhammed, by the way, had many daughters but no sons.
So I think it is possible to argue that the religions that dominate India and China, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism and others, are possibly even worse for women than Islam. Think of it like this. Imagine that you had to live your life all over in either India, China or Saudi Arabia. I would absolutely and totally
hate to have to live in Saudi Arabia, but I trust that in that country I would at least have been allowed to have been born. I'm not absolutely sure that that would have been the case in India or China.
Ann
EDIT: I'll be back at some later time and talk more about Christianity and Islam. But regarding that article you posted, Pam, I have to say that I find Sharia to be very, very sexist indeed, and I consider many parts of it completely incompatible with human rights and equality between men and women. As for the British Archbishop, his talks about accepting Sharia in Britain led to a thunderstorm of protests and calls for the Archbishop's resignation.
