Let’s not rush into anything now
Ho hum – a woman says women are equal, male clerics pitch fits.
Zeinab Radwan…announced during a conference on “Citizenship” that “the testimony of a woman is legally equal in weight with a man’s testimony.”…Clerics were swift to condemn Radwan’s statement, as expected. Gamal Qutb, former head of the Fatwa council in Al-Azhar, impugned Radwan’s credibility on Islamic Jurisprudence and warned against tampering with the Shari’a. In his view, it would be insane to continuously alter interpretations of the Quran every time conditions in society human behavior changed.
Oh well quite. Exactly so. It would be stark staring insane to keep on and on and on forever changing interpretations of the Koran simply because conditions changed – what could possibly be madder than that? Because conditions change all the time, society changes, human behavior changes, all those things are fickle as windmills, they’re always whirling up and down and round about, first one thing then another; one minute it’s slavery and hierarchy and violence and the next minute it’s equality and freedom and peace, up down, up down, skirts long, skirts short; it’s all so arbitrary and whimsical and meaningless, there’s no way to choose among them, of course the only thing to do is have one interpretation of one book written fourteen centuries ago and then stick to it like death forever after no matter what. Because who cares if people grow and learn and change, who cares if we gradually collect data and explanations and experience that indicate that some ways of life are better for more people than other ways of life are? A pox on all that; what we want is stability and continuity and certainty and above all predictability – we want to know that women were inferior yesterday and they’re inferior today and they’ll be inferior tomorrow. We want to know where we are. We want to be able to find our way around with our eyes shut because it’s too god damn much trouble to open them.
While being interviewed by Al-Jazeera yesterday, Qutb lashed out at the Western world for “having molded such speakers to serve their interests and who are being guided by the West. Those who live in our midst while representing another culture and regardless of their elevated worldly status are unqualified to speak on religious matters.”
Those who live in our midst while representing another culture – interesting touch – reminiscent of Leon Kass’s ‘All friends of human freedom and dignity—including even the atheists among us’ combined with the convenient genuflection to ‘culture’. Note the contradiction, too – we mustn’t change interpretations of the Koran every time conditions in society change, yet ‘culture’ is a valor-word. On the one hand the timeless and eternal, on the other hand the contingent and situated and mutable. Well that’s clerics for you, any port in a storm.
Culture must be signified.
It is the culture that provides identity and hence cognizance of one’s existance. Without culture, we will all be doing boring things like gazing at stars and trying to figure out such useless stuff like how do we arrive at knowledge.
‘In his view, it would be insane to continuously alter interpretations of the Quran every time conditions in society human behavior changed’.
Quite. Yet another reason to throw that piece of crap ‘holy book’ into the dustbin of history once and for all. If only…
“Those who live in our midst while representing another culture and regardless of their elevated worldly status are unqualified to speak on religious matters.”
Ha! That’s the classic criticism I was referring to in my post on the next thread wrt to Sisters in Islam. All muslim women who want to work ‘within’ the system to bring about reform get this line thrown at them all across the muslim world – it is remarkable how homogeneous that world suddenly becomes when it comes to a woman challenging the religious status quo!
That’s terrific, isn’t it. Another tightly locked circle. If you want to change anything, that shows that you are ‘representing another culture’ – necessarily, by definition. Therefore you are unqualified to speak. Therefore we will ignore you and there will be no change. Therefore people will dislike the way things are and want to change them – which will show that they are ‘representing another culture’ –
etc.
No escape. You can’t leave and you can’t change anything. Have a nice life!
Hamis said ..we will all be doing boring things like gazing at stars and trying to figure out such useless stuff like how do we arrive at knowledge”
I think I get what you are trying to say but, wow, what I dont get is why either of those pursuits is described by you as ‘boring’ or ‘useless’!
Without free inquiry we are little but an animal operating under instinct. Culture is fascinating yes but it shouldn’t be used as a dialectical tool to argue the limit of the human imagination.
Our imaginations are infinite (not god-like, infinite) and a religion can help us or hinder us but it will never stop the human race from wondering as we all gaze up at the incurious stars.
I’m pretty sure Hamid meant that ironically, gk. In short he agrees with you!