Women and religion

Good piece from the Times

The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof  

It is not that warlords in Congo cite Scripture to justify their mass rapes (although the last warlord I met there called himself a pastor and wore a button reading "rebels for Christ"). It's not that brides are burned in India as part of a Hindu ritual. And there's no verse in the Koran that instructs Afghan thugs to throw acid in the faces of girls who dare to go to school. 

Yet these kinds of abuses — along with more banal injustices, like slapping a girlfriend or paying women less for their work — arise out of a social context in which women are, often, second-class citizens. That's a context that religions have helped shape, and not pushed hard to change.. 

"Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths, creating an environment in which violations against women are justified," former President Jimmy Carter noted in a speech last month to the Parliament of the World's Religions in Australia. 

"The belief that women are inferior human beings in the eyes of God," Mr. Carter continued, "gives excuses to the brutal husband who beats his wife, the soldier who rapes a woman, the employer who has a lower pay scale for women employees, or parents who decide to abort a female embryo." 

Mr. Carter, who sees religion as one of the "basic causes of the violation of women's rights," is a member of The Elders, a small council of retired leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela..

The Elders are focusing on the role of religion in oppressing women, and they have issued a joint statement calling on religious leaders to "change all discriminatory practices within their own religions and traditions."
James Morton
1100-5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4

416 225 2777

www.jmortonmusings.blogspot.com