Tek tanrılı dinler karşısında kadın. (Hristiyanlık`ta ve İslamiyet`te kadının statüsüne karşılaştırmalı bir yaklaşım)

Abstract

SUMMARY WOMEN VERSUS MONOTHEISTIC RELIGIONS (A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF WOMEN'S STATUS IN CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM) Studying the relationship between women and religion poses manifold problems. There is, first, the question of religion in theory and religion in practice, the way it is actually experienced by people in various contexts and in different historical periods. Secondly, it is difficult to speak about women as if they constitute a unified entity, when in actual fact they lead a fragmented existence subject to divisions of class, race, nationality, ethnicity. Then again, while women have lived, and continue to live, in male-dominated societies, within or alongside the dominant patriarchal culture there has always been the possibility of the formation and maintenance of a certain distinctively female culture, for women have been both victims and active agents of history. Structures of domination, therefore, are also loci of resistance - a fact which consigns any simplistic and reductionist interpretation of socio-historical phenomena - including religion- to irrelevance. Things become all the more complicated when it comes to trying to understand women's subjectivity, the ways in which they conceive of themselves and of the world around them. This is indispensable if we are to be able to comprehend religion and the way it relates to women, particularly since religion is, perhaps more than anything else, a meaning system. But on the other hand, there are also the objective functions and aspects of religion to consider: the means it provides for legitimization and reification; its contribution to engendering and reinforcing rigid gender differences; the way in which women's subordination has been underwritten by the holy texts of the major monotheistic religions. 229certain themes initially introduced in the Introduction, but this time in a more overtly `subjective` manner, including explicit statements on how I feel about religion. Thus I argue that women should go beyond the restrictive boundaries of religion and reclaim both the right to eat of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, and also to claim the right to name, to produce `the definitions by which things are known`, and first and foremost with regard to themselves. `What's in a name?` one might ask -but the possessors of the right to name, to define, are also the possessors of power. The struggle for `self-determination` for women inevitably involves undermining imposed definitions and creating alternative ones. Thus I end with Hilde Hein's words: The very notion of religion, though not devoid of features that may be gratifying to women as well as to men, must be so contaminated with patriarchal structures and residual associations of polarized values, hierarchy, and transcendence that even the most scrupulous feminist expurgation oould not disinfect it. ^ounterweapons will not serve where disarmament must be our end. 234SUMMARY WOMEN VERSUS MONOTHEISTIC RELIGIONS (A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF WOMEN'S STATUS IN CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM) Studying the relationship between women and religion poses manifold problems. There is, first, the question of religion in theory and religion in practice, the way it is actually experienced by people in various contexts and in different historical periods. Secondly, it is difficult to speak about women as if they constitute a unified entity, when in actual fact they lead a fragmented existence subject to divisions of class, race, nationality, ethnicity. Then again, while women have lived, and continue to live, in male-dominated societies, within or alongside the dominant patriarchal culture there has always been the possibility of the formation and maintenance of a certain distinctively female culture, for women have been both victims and active agents of history. Structures of domination, therefore, are also loci of resistance - a fact which consigns any simplistic and reductionist interpretation of socio-historical phenomena - including religion- to irrelevance. Things become all the more complicated when it comes to trying to understand women's subjectivity, the ways in which they conceive of themselves and of the world around them. This is indispensable if we are to be able to comprehend religion and the way it relates to women, particularly since religion is, perhaps more than anything else, a meaning system. But on the other hand, there are also the objective functions and aspects of religion to consider: the means it provides for legitimization and reification; its contribution to engendering and reinforcing rigid gender differences; the way in which women's subordination has been underwritten by the holy texts of the major monotheistic religions. 229certain themes initially introduced in the Introduction, but this time in a more overtly `subjective` manner, including explicit statements on how I feel about religion. Thus I argue that women should go beyond the restrictive boundaries of religion and reclaim both the right to eat of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, and also to claim the right to name, to produce `the definitions by which things are known`, and first and foremost with regard to themselves. `What's in a name?` one might ask -but the possessors of the right to name, to define, are also the possessors of power. The struggle for `self-determination` for women inevitably involves undermining imposed definitions and creating alternative ones. Thus I end with Hilde Hein's words: The very notion of religion, though not devoid of features that may be gratifying to women as well as to men, must be so contaminated with patriarchal structures and residual associations of polarized values, hierarchy, and transcendence that even the most scrupulous feminist expurgation oould not disinfect it. ^ounterweapons will not serve where disarmament must be our end. 234SUMMARY WOMEN VERSUS MONOTHEISTIC RELIGIONS (A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF WOMEN'S STATUS IN CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM) Studying the relationship between women and religion poses manifold problems. There is, first, the question of religion in theory and religion in practice, the way it is actually experienced by people in various contexts and in different historical periods. Secondly, it is difficult to speak about women as if they constitute a unified entity, when in actual fact they lead a fragmented existence subject to divisions of class, race, nationality, ethnicity. Then again, while women have lived, and continue to live, in male-dominated societies, within or alongside the dominant patriarchal culture there has always been the possibility of the formation and maintenance of a certain distinctively female culture, for women have been both victims and active agents of history. Structures of domination, therefore, are also loci of resistance - a fact which consigns any simplistic and reductionist interpretation of socio-historical phenomena - including religion- to irrelevance. Things become all the more complicated when it comes to trying to understand women's subjectivity, the ways in which they conceive of themselves and of the world around them. This is indispensable if we are to be able to comprehend religion and the way it relates to women, particularly since religion is, perhaps more than anything else, a meaning system. But on the other hand, there are also the objective functions and aspects of religion to consider: the means it provides for legitimization and reification; its contribution to engendering and reinforcing rigid gender differences; the way in which women's subordination has been underwritten by the holy texts of the major monotheistic religions. 229certain themes initially introduced in the Introduction, but this time in a more overtly `subjective` manner, including explicit statements on how I feel about religion. Thus I argue that women should go beyond the restrictive boundaries of religion and reclaim both the right to eat of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, and also to claim the right to name, to produce `the definitions by which things are known`, and first and foremost with regard to themselves. `What's in a name?` one might ask -but the possessors of the right to name, to define, are also the possessors of power. The struggle for `self-determination` for women inevitably involves undermining imposed definitions and creating alternative ones. Thus I end with Hilde Hein's words: The very notion of religion, though not devoid of features that may be gratifying to women as well as to men, must be so contaminated with patriarchal structures and residual associations of polarized values, hierarchy, and transcendence that even the most scrupulous feminist expurgation oould not disinfect it. ^ounterweapons will not serve where disarmament must be our end. 234