The Islamic Feminine?

Jean the Bean, has a post here with a question for me about Islam. The question, a very good one, is whether in Islam the feminine is neglected and whether this neglect is at the root of the masculinity and warrior ethos. It's not a question I had really ever considered before, these are just some initial thoughts. I hope this answers her question. I think I'm just trying to lay out as much of the information, pro/con, and let people make their own decision. Because I don't really know where I stand on the question.

Jean compares Islam to Christianity in this regard. Christianity is definitely a patriarchial religion and women were certainly not treated well (and still aren't) in classical Christianity. But especially Medieval Catholicism (and Eastern Orthodoxy) venerated Mary deeply. And it is definitely true that the Marian devotion, particularly in the Roman Catholic tradition, flows directly out of the ancient mother worship tradition. So while officially the "paganism" is gone from Catholicism, the feminine energy is still there. And Jean suggests, maybe this had something to do with the rise of feminism in the West. For support of that view, you can watch this talk by Thomas Cahill on his new book on the Middle Ages. Oh, and a complete side-note: Jean--original sin is not a Jewish notion but a Latin Christian one (even the Greek Christians don't believe in original sin, just a fall)....you can thank Augustine and his sexual neuroses for the whole blame women front. The Rabbis certainly have their typical male prejudices and fear of women's uncontrollable sexual power, but not this one.

But anyway, back to Islam.

A few pieces of information on the question of feminine.

Islam has a lunar calendar. They were a desert people and the Moon is traditionally a feminine image and was worshipped as such by pre-Islamic Arabs. That is still there within Islam, similar to Christianity in that it is not official but there it is.

The pre-Islamic Arab peoples were what we could call today animist or more educated ones henotheists--there were many different names for god/God but they were all the same God (your Yahweh is my Jupiter is his Zeus kinda thing). In early Judaism, (one strain anyway) God was named Elohim (God of gods), which conceived of God as a superior king-like being over a heavenly court. The common Canaanite (pagan) name for god was "El". Similarly the name Allah is "al-lah" "the god" or "THE GOD", Al and El related as both Arabic and Semitic are common language groups. So al-lah worship was simiilar in that Al-lah was in henotheism "the g/God" which all other gods were just names for or was the High God over top the other intermediary gods (which became angels essentially in Judeo-Christian-Islamic lore).

Mecca was a religious pilgrimage for all sorts of travelers in the Arabian peninsula. The Ka'ba, which is the black stone building with the cloth drapped over it where you see all the Muslim pilgrims circle around in the videos today, before Islam housed figurines/totems from all these different religions.

And definitely particularly strong in that time was the Cosmic Goddess/Dying-Rising Man-God Son Worship. When Muhammad captured Mecca he spared the city but he cleansed, in true monotheistic fashion, the Kaba. He smashed all the figurines, or what he called idols, in an effort to argue (in true "blue" fashion) that there was only One God and all were equal before that God. He did however spare one and only image: Mary and Jesus--which was definitely of the Egyptian Cosmic Goddess/Child God variety. So again that trend is still hidden in there.

But there was another episode that might speak more to Jean's exclusion of the feminine even more so in orthodox Islam than say Judaism or Christianity. In mystical Islam (Sufism) the feminine is everywhere, but mystical nondual Islam was unfortunately like Christianity officially expunged.

The episode involves the infamous so-called Satanic Verses. The story is disputed and Rushdie played on that theme and is a very emotional spot for many and nearly got himself killed for it.

The basic storyline goes something like this: Prophet Muhammad deeply wanted the Qurayashi--his tribe whoe ruled Mecca--to accept his message. Up to now that had not for he was considered an atheist in a way by them--he wanted to kill all their gods (as they saw it). It meant that their ancestors had worshipped idols and disconnected the people from their ancestral heritage. [Here is the Wiki vesion which is decent in its portrayal.]

So Muhammad hears a revelation that says that Allat, al-Uzza, and al-Manat are intercessors. These are traditional Arabic goddesses. Intercessor then being the consort imagery to the male God-King. As the story goes--and who knows the veracity of this--the Meccans rejoiced and worshipped (prostrated) with Muhammad. But then the Angel Gabriel came and rebuked Muhammad and said that he had erred. It was not God's voice but rather Satan's that had tricked him. God reassures him that just as with all the other prophets Satan had tested him adn that God remained faithful to him and moreover, the intercession of the female deity/angels was nothing.

So that was a moment we could say, in integral speak, where Islam could have transcended and included the early pagan worldview/religion. But it did not. I don't know how to read that. If you read the Hebrew Bible, like the Book of Kings, Samuel, etc. everyone is worshipping Yahweh with Asherah--a female consort. Judaism was not monotheistic from the beginning. It developed over 900 years. Christianity for Catholics-Orthodox (original blue Xty) has had this "pagan" (red/purple) structure there but does not officially acknowledge it. Which perhaps again connects with Jean's argument. Islam it just got thrown out and in one generation I think is the difficulty. Because it was the last of the great world religions it has had the least amount of time to revolutionize itself. But that episode is very relevant to the discussion.

--The status of women vis a vis the Quran and early Islam is a mixed bag. Muhammad did practice as was customary child brides (his favorite wife Aisha was 9 when they married, the Prophet [PBUH] something like 40-50). However Muhammad also allowed women to inherit property on their own and gave them the right of divorce. Jesus took the opposite route to the same destination: he disallowed men from divorce to protect women from being thrown out into the street. It has been co-opted by the Catholic Church to keep women in marriages and forcing them to have children. Similarly, the early prophetic (proto-modernist we might say) charge of both religions was quickly consummed back into the mythic value structure and unfortunately was bound to happen.

--The Quran, like the Bible, speaks of God in feminine terms. Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate is the most common form of God's 99 names: both feminine (Rahman in Arabic). Just as Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible is said to be like a mother holding her child (Israel) to her cheeck. Very deep and intimate beautiful imagery.

But yes all that being true, that Allah is beyond gender, beyond human conception, is still given the evolutionary record Masculine in Energy. Just (good), Concerned for the poor fighting on teh side of the forgotten (good) and retributive (not so good) as well as punishing (really not so good).

I think the Arab tribal setup is here particularly important. The Bedouin lifestyle of the Peninsula is a brutal existence. Even more so I would say than being an agrarian peasant in Palestine--although that was plenty bad itself. Anthropological cross-cultural analysis shows that in times of good and plenty in hunter-gatherer and agrarian societies, that the sharp division between male/female roles breaks down a bit. Still there no doubt, but not as sharp. But in the moment of crisis: famine, war, whatever, then immediately the total and sharp divisions between male and female roles re-emerges.

In the Arabian setup they were always in crisis mode. The Quran is written during a time of war, in the desert, where famine and access to water is paramount, and among a group of people cast about by their own families trying to create an entirely new social orer from the ground up. There was no identity beyond the clan/tribe before Muhammad in the Peninsula. So the sharp male-female role distinctions was for them a sorta permanent feature. The veil comes about from the practice of keeping Muhammad's wives protected (and subjugated?) covered in their tents. Muslim women as a way of identifying with the wives, as spiritual mother/sister figures, took up the practice which, in part, is such a difficult item today. It's not just an oppressive force laid on women by men (although certainly elements of that are there) but also was a choice by women. So is that female power? You could say its mythic (blue) feminism.

So as the Islamic empire arose in cosmopolitan areas, just as with Christianity, Judaism, Hellensim, Buddhism, whatever proto-feminism arose. There were powerful Islamic Queens (although that's not the word they used), advisors, and so on.

The real problem as I think I stressed in the last couple of posts is that the traditional form of Islam was destroyed by colonialism. The caliphate, the successors to the Prophet in Sunni Islam, of the Ottoman Turks was dissolved after WWI and Turkey was established as a modern secular nation by Kemal Ataturk. In Osama bin Laden's letters to the West you will hear him constantly refer to 1918--which is precisely this the dissolution of the Caliphate and hence the end of the Islamic Emipre.

With the rise of literacy, the internet, global communications and cheap publishing, Muslims (as well as Christian Protestants) worship very differently than did their ancestors. Islam has always believed that the Quran is the dictated word of God and Muhammad was simply a mouthpiece. But for most Muslms for most of history, the common way of hearing the Quran was chant and preaching on Fridays. There was a holism we could say to that.

With everyone know having their own books, fundamentalism has a much more modern feel to it. It takes out bits and pieces from wherever it wants and they become de-contextualized and read as the one program for all--a common de-historical, myth of the given modernist wave move.

And in this scenario, where Islamism is trying to re-build blue because from an evolutionary point of view it has to--there is no skipping stages--this classical/modern split is very key. When the context is stripped away and the Quran, as in Sayid Qutb, becomes simply this blueprint for Islamic takeover, then the Arab tribal context becomes the standard for all relations, particularly male-female. And in this regard, the brutality of the environment and the harshness of the bedouin tribal way of life--whch Muhammad and the early Muslims could never completely "transcend" if you will--becomes deeply problematic for the modern world.

Until there is a modern industrialized/infromational economy in the ME you will never see the jump passed patriarchy. That is why there were glimpses of it, in Muhammad's life, in Sufism, inn courtly circles, but never on the ground floor. And the blue-Islamist version arising today is often dis-eased/unhealthy blue. Although I am saying that classical Islam was not unhealthy blue but modern fundamentalism Islamism, mostly is. So I place a great distinction on the classical versus modern versions of the religion (even though both mythic). Others do not and see them as of one piece. People will have to make up their minds on that question. I just want to make my own viewpoint clear.

But either way, from an integral perspective, until there the techno-economic base there is no going forward. The oil here is a huge problem. It prevents modern economies from sprouting up. I'm not a Marxist or globalist determinist that the LR controls all destiny, but I do put major emphasis on that dimension.

Wilber argues that the techno-economic base is the single greatest determinant for the average mode of consciousness. Stress on single (not only) determinant for the average (not all) mode of consciousness.

The Islamic world is still disconnected from the global economy. It's single greatest determinant determines patriarchal structure. Even in the US Muslims generally live in a modern economy and overall there is non-threatening Islam. Although again here, single not only determinant. Some North American mosques are infiltrated with what we call extremist versions of Islam. But generally nobody joins up because they are living the good life. In Europe they are not so the message hits home. So it is not, even in the US, that this message is still not being spoken. It is, in certain places anyway. It's a weird place, where the message has not been overthrown, marginalized (in a good way) and yet isn't really making inroads among the people. Within 10 years I suspect we will see the first strong flowerings of what is now in genesis form, of Orange Islam within the North American context.

How it will deal with the feminine will be a really important question.