The Veil 3
Jun. 21st, 2010 08:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purejuiceIn modernity, therefore -- the history of the democratization of religious experience as persuasively posited by James -- we may discard as barbaric certain Gods. These James defines as follows:
Nothing is more striking than the secular alteration that goes on in the moral and religious tone of men, as their insight into nature and their social arrangements progressively develop. After an interval of a few generations the mental climate proves unfavorable to notions of the deity which at an earlier date were perfectly satisfactory: the older gods have fallen below the common secular level, and can no longer be believed in. To-day a deity who should require bleeding sacrifices to placate him would be too sanguinary to be taken seriously. Even if powerful historical credentials were put forward in his favor, we would not look at them. Once, on the contrary, his cruel appetites were of themselves credentials. They positively recommended him to men's imaginations in ages when such coarse signs of power were respected and no others could be understood. Such deities then were worshiped because such fruits were relished.
http://www.psychwww.com/psyrelig/james/james11.htm
There is much to quibble with here, starting with the notion of inevitable progress to which the even the eternal nature of God himself is subject.
But this is not what James is talking about.
He is talking about a God whose personality changes as men's power enactments change. In other words, the character of God and his utility morphs with the character of the power relations of men in history. I think we can, all of us, red and yellow, black and white, accept this idea because we can all clearly see that it is true in our own lives and in what little we know of history and the lives of others.
My grandfather, the devout scion of 25 generations of nut-cuttin' Franco-Scots-Irish Protestants and a vigorous Darwinian professor of biology, could do both. And it did not trouble him for more than a minute to solve the problem. As a scholar of Greek and Latin, as all Presbyterian gentlemen born in 1860 in South Carolina were, with some Hebrew and probably Aramaic thrown in just so's you could read your own Bible like a good Presbyterian, Grampa Juice was clearly aware that most of the creationists' (and many other) problem(s) were problems of inaccurate translation of the Bible into English. The earth could have been created in seven "periods of time", I believe, was his argument, seven "days" not being precisely accurate. You know somebody like this in your life, whose point has such "immediate luminousness" -- one of James' criteria for the usefulness of spiritual phenomena -- that it changes the way you live your life permanently. Like the way God is supposed to.
So, then, we are not talking about the character of God, which is eternal, and a mystery, but how the history of power relations among men, and women, changes religion. Scholarship of the canonical texts of Mohammed, and his exegetes, parallels precisely modern scholarship of the Bible in the west. One Moroccan scholar, Fatima Mernissi, has carefully gone through both the Koran and the Hadith searching for Mohammed's own view on the veiling of women, and subsequent incrustations of Hadith misogynism which do not reflect, it is argued, Mohammed's intention but rather the history of the interpretation of the Koran, and the times in which its interpreters lived. I am certain that women throughout the Muslim world are discussing these matters, even as the United Nations imperializes the unveiling of Islamic women by linking it to human rights violations, and thence to World Bank loans. Thus does wearing a veil become, perhaps, a defiance of the U.S. imperialists one can see denounced with ferocity on the feminist website of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. It is RAWA's clandestine photograph of the Taliban's execution of the veiled Zarmina which is the icon for these posts.
Again, anyone who believes in God would be hard put to justify this feminist veiling (or unveiling) as God's will, or Mohammad's, when deployed in defiance of western imperialists. I think we can agree, red and yellow, black and white, that it is not God's will to make war with something you wear on your head. It is P.R.. I think we can agree that aligning ourselves with the will of God is an inside, and possibly a secret and humble, job that no amount of posturing or physical effacement will achieve. Veiling for war is rather another move in the long history of human power relations. For believers in God, the question of the veil as a nationalist and war-mongering symbol rather than the will of God -- Arafat folded his keffiyeh over his right shoulder in the shape of Palestine -- is a serious matter.
to be continued
arafat's keffiyeh, the guest workers, and the quakers' hats
women's literacy, islamic canon system and protestant reformation
http://www.psychwww.com/psyrelig/james/james11.htm
There is much to quibble with here, starting with the notion of inevitable progress to which the even the eternal nature of God himself is subject.
But this is not what James is talking about.
He is talking about a God whose personality changes as men's power enactments change. In other words, the character of God and his utility morphs with the character of the power relations of men in history. I think we can, all of us, red and yellow, black and white, accept this idea because we can all clearly see that it is true in our own lives and in what little we know of history and the lives of others.
My grandfather, the devout scion of 25 generations of nut-cuttin' Franco-Scots-Irish Protestants and a vigorous Darwinian professor of biology, could do both. And it did not trouble him for more than a minute to solve the problem. As a scholar of Greek and Latin, as all Presbyterian gentlemen born in 1860 in South Carolina were, with some Hebrew and probably Aramaic thrown in just so's you could read your own Bible like a good Presbyterian, Grampa Juice was clearly aware that most of the creationists' (and many other) problem(s) were problems of inaccurate translation of the Bible into English. The earth could have been created in seven "periods of time", I believe, was his argument, seven "days" not being precisely accurate. You know somebody like this in your life, whose point has such "immediate luminousness" -- one of James' criteria for the usefulness of spiritual phenomena -- that it changes the way you live your life permanently. Like the way God is supposed to.
So, then, we are not talking about the character of God, which is eternal, and a mystery, but how the history of power relations among men, and women, changes religion. Scholarship of the canonical texts of Mohammed, and his exegetes, parallels precisely modern scholarship of the Bible in the west. One Moroccan scholar, Fatima Mernissi, has carefully gone through both the Koran and the Hadith searching for Mohammed's own view on the veiling of women, and subsequent incrustations of Hadith misogynism which do not reflect, it is argued, Mohammed's intention but rather the history of the interpretation of the Koran, and the times in which its interpreters lived. I am certain that women throughout the Muslim world are discussing these matters, even as the United Nations imperializes the unveiling of Islamic women by linking it to human rights violations, and thence to World Bank loans. Thus does wearing a veil become, perhaps, a defiance of the U.S. imperialists one can see denounced with ferocity on the feminist website of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. It is RAWA's clandestine photograph of the Taliban's execution of the veiled Zarmina which is the icon for these posts.
Again, anyone who believes in God would be hard put to justify this feminist veiling (or unveiling) as God's will, or Mohammad's, when deployed in defiance of western imperialists. I think we can agree, red and yellow, black and white, that it is not God's will to make war with something you wear on your head. It is P.R.. I think we can agree that aligning ourselves with the will of God is an inside, and possibly a secret and humble, job that no amount of posturing or physical effacement will achieve. Veiling for war is rather another move in the long history of human power relations. For believers in God, the question of the veil as a nationalist and war-mongering symbol rather than the will of God -- Arafat folded his keffiyeh over his right shoulder in the shape of Palestine -- is a serious matter.
to be continued
arafat's keffiyeh, the guest workers, and the quakers' hats
women's literacy, islamic canon system and protestant reformation
