BEYOND BOMBS AND BURQAS
Phyllis Palmer
    
    As we prepare to join in the worldwide Women Say NO to War campaign beginning International Women’s Day, March 8, I am reminded of images that still haunt me from the early days of our attack on Afghanistan.  Amid the horrifying scenes of exploding bombs and blasted homes floated the chilling images of silenced and anonymous Afghan women cringing beneath their oppressive burqas.  Living in terror not only of the bombs but also of beatings from Taliban police if they so much as allowed an inch of ankle accidentally to show, their huddled forms, which Ellen Goodman described as “spectral heaps of humanity,” gave mute testimony to the real character of terrorism.
    Americans were shocked at the extreme measures used by the Taliban in their desperation to stifle and control women, as well as the horrendous violence of the 9/11 terrorists in their determination to bring down the U.S. Goliath.  I suspect there is a connection between the two kinds of extremism responsible for all this suffering, and a direct correlation between the way a society treats women and its level of hyper-masculinity and violence.  And people’s theology has much to do with how they view and treat women, as well as how they justify using violence to achieve their ends.
    The Taliban’s sadistic oppression of women should not be written off as just an unfortunate aberration.   Its roots lie in the very core of the patriarchal worldview underlying the three great desert religions: Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.  These three brother-faiths have in common a belief in one God, a male God who demands loyalty and intervenes, at times violently, in human affairs.  The  fundamentalist extremes of these religions share a  conviction that women are inferior and must be controlled, and a long history of bloodshed in the name of their God and their particular religion.
     When God is portrayed as exclusively male, and the feminine is excluded entirely from our imagery of the divine, a system of male supremacy and domination is enshrined as the natural,  “divinely-ordained” social order.  Not only does this serve as the prototype for a pervasive  vertical system of domination of favored groups over others, but it legitimates the denigration and abuse of the female half of the population, creating a dangerous imbalance of power in human relations.  
    The UN estimates that as many as 5,000 “honor killings” a year occur in at least 14 countries, mostly in the Middle East, Pakistan and India.  These men are rarely punished for murdering their sisters, daughters or wives for “crimes” such as being raped or smoking, believed to dishonor their families.  Even though our own society is finally, grudgingly allowing women some access to positions of power, many men still feel entitled to control “their” women.  In the U.S. around 3,000 women a year are murdered by the men who claimed to love them, and millions are battered.  Clearly domestic terrorism has an intimate as well as a public face!
    Male-dominated societies tend to be warlike as  violence can become the ultimate proof of manhood, and peace-making values are ridiculed as weak and “feminine.” To project the image of strength and toughness required of soldiers and leaders in warrior societies, men (and women) who seek power are often pressured to repudiate, in themselves and their public policies, those gentler, life-nurturing human qualities  commonly associated with women.  When empathy, respect and compassion, so vital to harmonious  relationships, are stifled it can create a toxic brew of alienation, insensitivity and  aggressiveness that often leads to conflict and escalating violence.  
    The result is too often a moribund society dominated by hostility and militarism, in which life is devalued.  Societies which exclude the contributions and values of women from their public affairs eventually spiral to self-destruction, just as a bird with only one wing is incapable of sustained flight.  In his new book, Our Endangered Values, Jimmy Carter critiques America’s “culture of death.”  And Osama bin Laden is quoted as saying, “I love death more than you love life.”    
    In an insightful article, “The Male God of the Desert,” Richard Rodriguez, Pacific News Service editor, predicts, “If we survive the coming wars of the 21st century among the three desert religions, my suspicion is that a deeper reflux awaits us.  The masculine principle in religion will be challenged by a feminine spiritual force that is gathering strength behind veils.”
    I think he’s onto something.  A nonviolent, but potentially powerful revolution is brewing beneath the radar of the world’s male leaders.  Sick of the warring madness that threatens to engulf us, women the world over are quietly sharing their vision of a world transformed by a new kind of power – not the deadly power of coercive domination over others, but the life-giving power of love in action.  Joined by equally courageous men who have reclaimed their own nurturing side, these women who love life, humanity and our planet, are laboring to bring into being a new partnership way of living together that can preserve what we love.  
    Dare we hope that as Afghan women throw off their stifling burqas and struggle to take their place alongside the men as equal partners and full participants in rebuilding their society, their sisters around the world may throw off the psychological burqas that have confined us within the patriarchal worldview, and reclaim our power to reshape our societies and challenge our great religions to live up to their noble potential.  It will take the passion and diverse gifts of all of us, and the sooner we join the struggle, the better chance we have to save our world.