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Old 07-28-2008, 05:46 AM   #181
DanaC
We have to go back, Kate!
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Yorkshire
Posts: 25,964
lol Sundae.

Quote:
I have no issue with Muslims outside of their hatred of women (which is not exclusive of just Muslims),written right inside of the Koran, which I read.
Hatred of women is not written into the Koran. A patriarchal attitude to women is not the same as hatred. The Koran was written at a time when that perception of women was the norm and indeed the Koran was fairly forward looking on the subject compared to contemporary thinking. Even passages which to a modern reader seem woefully misogynistic can also be read as a softening of a much harsher, prior conception of womanhood. There is an oft-quoted passage which tells husbands they may chastise their wives with a stick as thick as their thumb. What is less often noted is the exhortation to try other methods first. The passage tells men not to immediately resort to violence with their wives. It places physical limits on that violence (in a similar way to the way laws on chastising children still do in many countries) such as limiting the size of the stick and prohibiting its use on certain parts of the body.

In sixteenth-century England, there was a popular rhyme: A woman, an asse, and a walnut tree, Bring the more fruit the more beaten they bee.

The Koran is of its time. As indeed is the bible. We cannot look at the eras in which they were written and make a blanket statement that women were hated in that time. Even the men who wrote these books should not be dismissed simply as misogynists, though I am sure some of them might have been. They reflected their times. They reflected custom and practices. In many cases they softened earlier customs: think about the attitude in both the Koran and the Bible towards forgiveness for the repentant believer; think about the attitude to the poor in the Bible, to the socially despised in the Koran; to theft when it is borne of starvation and need, the protections against moneylending; the right of a woman to seek a divorce if her husband does not satisfy her needs.


The patriarchal views of the Koran and the Bible both, are dangerous, in my opinion. Far from softening earlier customs, they are now being used by some men (and some women) to revert to an earlier, more patriarchal, harsher, less forgiving and less tolerant attitude towards women (amongst other things). I find it very worrying and it saddens me greatly. But the Koran was not written as a misogynistic tract.
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