Whether behind closed doors or out in the open, minorities are constantly struggling with acts of oppression that they face on a day to day basis. These minorities, sometimes in big numbers living within a group, are still faced with the same struggles, due to a trait they all have in common. My thesis focuses on the importance of empowering a theodicy from an Islamic perspective that attempts to provide answers and explanations to struggles and actions that create great pain to these minorities; in specific women’s oppression and in order to help empower minorities on an individual basis in their lives.
In its philosophical term, evil is the absence of good or wickedness that causes destruction and misfortune. Pain, disability, loss of pleasure, freedom, and opportunity all have the absence of good as a common factor, and with it comes harm to the human soul.
God is thought to be by most, a supernatural force and therefore not bound by the limits of reason and logic. Since God is known to be all merciful and powerful, the result we see in reality leads many to question why bad things happen to good people. Why would God allow the earthquake in Haiti to happen? It killed hundreds of thousands of families and shattered their homes. It made an entire country suffer. Using Epicurus’s logic, we wonder if whether God is willing to prevent these things, but is unable, or if God was able to prevent them, but not willing. If he was both willing and able, why did the earthquake happen in the first place, killing all ages of people both believers in God and non-believers equally? Many answer this question by thinking of good and evil as a construct, not a supernatural force, as we see it in John Hick’s soul making theodicy, which claims evil is good to an individual’s building of character and the spirit’s wholeness. We also see it in Anton LeVey’s ideas, founder of the Church of Satan, who thinks of destruction and suffering to be considered part of the process of existence and should not be linked to evil.
When we turn the argument around from wondering how evil can be seen as a good thing to why evil would even exist in and between humans and in minorities in particular in the first place; when the building of character and spiritual growth can be the result of some other super-natural force that didn’t require us to go through suffering (considering God is all powerful), God is capable of creating us in any way that God wants. So why not create a world with fewer rainy days? Theodicy at the Margins is a comforter to those who suffer and wonder why.
If we ever succeed in explaining the evil that does have some good to it, how would we be able to explain the evil that has absolutely no benefit? Referring to the Holocaust, most people today would think that there is no good behind what had happened to the millions who died and the millions more who lost their families and friends, yet back in the past when it was happening, many would tell you that it was a good idea to get rid of all the unwanted people sharing this world with the rest. So who decides whether this particular evil is good or not? More importantly, if we do claim that many evils like the holocaust result in greater goods, would we not be participating in negatively inserting evil into our societies and making it OK in the world to have a holocaust, because we conclude evil to has a result of the greater good? Why should others, in particular the minorities associated in the holocaust (people with disabilities, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, Slavic people and other political and religious opponents) have to suffer to make the world a better place? How do the women who were converted into sex slaves and forced into unbearable labor and un-ethical human experiments lead to a greater good in the world? Making the world a better place requires acts of goodness, cooperation, and empathy, not bloodshed, murders and violence on the streets. Just as evil comes in many forms and shapes, theodicy at the margins arrives in different masks and approaches towards finding a solution or antidote from the illness that the world suffers.
The reason behind our stress with evil relates to our fear of it. It is fear that drives us to become silenced in the presence of evil. Fear is what starves us, sickens us, and kills us. It is with evil in others that we see fear in ourselves. The reason behind all these problems is evil, but the reason to why these problems still persist in our lives is from the fear we hold of evil. We all experience this in alarmingly different ways. The Florentine writer, Niccolò Machiavelli advised politicians in the sixteenth century "...it is far safer to be feared than loved." How else could have individuals like Adolph Hitler and Sadam Husain stayed for so long and succeeded in hurting millions? Why else do we still see rape crimes committed in countless numbers in societies world-wide today?
I chose this topic for my argument, because Theodicy at the Margins is unique within its kind and is most certainly not a fan of the global approach to solving the problem of evil. It leaves a trail for the marginalized and the oppressed in society that are under the hands of dominant groups or authority. Feminist Theology and any other spiritual belief or religion can be associated in Theodicy at the Margins. Unlike other theodicies that focus on the experience of suffering through the problem of evil, Theodicy at the Margins, looks into the problem of evil through the sufferer’s eyes. Its theoretical shift moves to particular topics such as women or the poor, and is more concrete on issues of domestic abuse, violence, and economic exploitation. These changes result in a theological shift by localizing the problem of evil, such as making it more personal. Just because we all suffer together, does not mean we all feel it the same way. Theodicy at the Margins’ Theology can be described as this: the importance of protecting and empowering the weak, because God’s preferential likeness leans towards the poor and the venerable.
Theodicy at the Margins attempts to find peace within your experience of suffering. It regains power to those who lost it and restores their voices and goals to better live their lives. It shows relevance and this is a theodicy any oppressed minority can relate to, because it gives a sense of “you’re not alone” to those who feel they are. Its religious grounding from this Islamic perspective, mainly focuses on Islam’s opinion on women as proof of its intolerance to oppression. It improves ethics which then lead to improving society and with the improvement of society, the sources of oppression can be eliminated. Its practical approach will benefit its attendance to any real-life situation and the best part about it, is its diversity, I can relate to it and you can relate to it. Regardless of how similar or different our backgrounds, oppression knows no name. Like makeup, it is put on our faces. Like masks, we have it justified in our heads by inexperienced make-up artists telling us we look better like this. Then we allow them to toss extra glitter and watch us walk outside the door, blind from the truth.
Suffering, according to Theodicy at the Margins, comes in multiple faces like abuse or violence and enters your life in different forms, whether in gender or authority. It looks at the problem from the individual’s perspective and emotions; it faces cruelty as it is, raw and unfair. It refuses to take pictures of it walking down the runway of life. It tries to work through the problem, not to find a solution, but to help the individual overcome that suffering and find the gold at the end of the rainbow: Freedom. Theodicy at the margins, signifies the marginalized in society, those who are weak and oppressed in the hands of a higher power, it is about those who experience pain in an oppressed framework, those who feel hopelessness in a minority background, those minorities that include women, ethnic groups, the poor, disabled, or any human being suffering from an act of unjust cruelty. That is what Theodicy at the margins can be defined as: an attempt to solve the problem of evil in the lenses of an oppressed individual labeled as a minority.
My favorite bra-burning part of this theological argument: Feminist Theology. Feminist theologians like Emma Willard and Serene Jones view women to have an endless capacity to love, grow, and become the most powerful that we can be. Sadly women are hated for it and preached against it. Every victory, discovery and material made by women was made with struggle, yet passion wins all. That is what feminist theology is all about, creating better conditions for women to live in, in a less evil freer spirited world, without having oppression getting in the way of defeating us. Feminist theology is a self- recognition confrontation of oppression within religion itself, studying the role of females’ throughout the history of religions, looking into both personal insights and religious sources. Feminist theology is found in other monotheistic religions like Christianity and Judaism, and Atheistic religions like Feminist Atheism. One of its newer forms is the Goddess movement, associated with second-wave Feminism back in the early 1970’s. Regardless of religion, movement or wave Feminist Theology that it is associated in, its ground remains solid: human equality, which is conquered by oppression’s extinction.
Debates termed as “debates about women” or in its French sense “querelle des femmes”, have been well studied by feminist theologians. We connect Feminist Theology to Theodicy at the Margins, because they bring our theodicy to life. Theodicy at the Margins is more focused on oppression; Feminist theology is more focused on equality. Together we find a beautiful blinding light at the end of the tunnel, the attempted solution(s) to the problem of evil.
So why do so many people inflict acts of evil when others are trying just as hard to eliminate it? When an individual or group is labeled as bad or evil, it creates a desire or justification to punish or inflict pain on that person(s) in or related to a group. It also works as a switch that turns our feelings off. Most of us do not carry empathy towards our enemies and therefore what we do to them, does not cause any remorse on our part. Whether you live in a culture that sees evil as an abstract being or an out-of-harmony state of mind, violence and oppression will always be the result, when evil is present. This explains the capability of the Holocaust, where people were able to do things to minorities they wouldn’t normally do. According to Rosenberg, the root of all violence is from evil, and by eliminating evil, we eliminate violence.
Theodicy at the Margins from an Islamic perspective, works with an effort to form an individual and global resistance against injustice, and oppressive behaviors towards religious structures among men and women. Because we practice religion through our social environment, the two tend to mix, creating a negative outcome we call Oppression. Oppression is defined as an act of unjust cruelty and since many women are considered to be outcasts (or beings of less value), this trait associated with the entire gender ends up being a justification as to why it is ok to inflict such acts, which is ridiculous. I do not have to go look for a source that tells me women make up half the human race. I can simply look outside the window and see it for myself. Women are the core grounding of any society and without women, society cannot and will not exist. Therefore by oppressing women, you oppress society and no good can ever come of that.
In Serene Jones’s book she defines Oppression as Violence to be incidents of harassments, intimidations, degradings, and humiliations. Countless numbers of oppressed women are raped, beaten or emotionally abused. Sadly, ideas in society of allowing the mixture of cultural and religious practices justify these acts. This is problematic for culture and will result in negative effects in society’s future generations. The example of Aisha’s case that I use in my paper is very critical in terms of the severity of the violence that the oppressed individual has experienced, as well as where she can turn to for comfort regarding the evil she suffers with.
Aisha, an 18-year-old female, was severely abused by her husband and in-laws. When she fled they chased after her and hunted her down, dragging her into a mountain by her village. They did not care that she was pleading; they did not care that the only reason she ran away was because if she had not her in-laws would have most-likely murdered her in their own home anyway. She was treated like a slave. Her mother in law held her down while her husband pulled out a knife, slicing off her ears, followed by her nose. Passing out from the unbearable pain, they had left her up there to die. She later woke up choking in her own blood. She now hides in a women’s shelter.
There is obviously no rule in Islam that agrees upon slicing someone’s nose and ears off for running away, because Islam bans violence and abuse in the first place. Here we can see clearly that oppression as violence (defined earlier by Serene Jones) plays the main role. She was not capable of even helping herself. Even the mother-in-law having been a female herself was the one who held Aisha down, while she received her “punishment”. In the case of Aisha being an oppressed female Muslim, where can she search within her religion to find the comfort she is looking for? Digging back to the very beginning, Theodicy at the Margins’ resources in the issue of women’s oppression under the religion of Islam, can be related to two aspects: what was verified in the Holy Quran, and stories of how Prophet Mohamed treated women.
When Democracy was first established in Greece, Greek women were still denied from even the basic human rights. Islam (Derived from the word Peace) leaving no one out, gave both genders their independent rights, something that was surprisingly not found in Europe 1400 years ago. The Islamic faith demands women to be treated with honor, respect, and justice. It refuses oppression of any kind. Verse (4:19) in the Quran asks women to be treated with kindness.
Conditions in Pre-Islamic Arabia were horrible for many women. They were treated like property; the practice of burying infant girls was common. This was due to the fear of poverty and the shame females brought upon the family. Most were illiterate, ignorant, and superstitious. Islam had become the door that the oppressed can escape to, giving women what they had long been waiting for like cookies and milk given to a hungry child, satisfaction. One of Prophet Muhammad’s famous quotes said, “None but a noble man treats women in an honorable manner. And none but an ignoble treats women disgracefully.” Looking into what the Quran had to say about women, the following verse reads: “Anyone who works righteousness, male or female, while believing, we will surely grant them a happy life in this world, and we will surely pay them their full recompense (on the Day of Judgment) for their righteous works.” . This Quran verse like the other versus, is gender friendly. I have realized as I was reading the Quran that both males and females are considered equal in terms of their humanity. Islam does not see women, for instance, as the source of evil, so blaming Eve for Original Sin can be thrown out the window in terms of Islamic beliefs. The reason behind not blaming Eve, is because Allah illustrates in his book that both sexes are created from the same single soul (nafs wahidah), which is what a verse from Surah an-Nisa’ (meaning women) states one person does not come before the other or is superior to the other. Also, a woman is not created for the purpose of a man. Rather, they are both created for the mutual benefit of each other. Adam is not better or more advanced than Eve, because he ate the apple too. That is why they were both punished.
The Quran verse in the beginning of the paragraph qualifies both women and men to believe in and worship God. They are also equal in terms of reward for obedience and punishment for disobedience in both this life and the after. No double standards allowed! For example, if a male is caught stealing, his right hand will be cut off as punishment, and the same applies to females. Religious duties, moral obligations, and personal honor are all equally distributed to both genders. A man who respects and honors a woman justly and freely, possesses a righteous character. The Prophet of Allah said: “The most complete believer is the best in character, and the best of you is the best to his womenfolk.”
Muslim scholars agree that the word “Muslim” can refer to both male and female. Thus, rights of education, freedom of speech, and anything mentioned in the religious books are not enclosed for males alone. Muslim women have the right to accept or decline marriage; they also have the right to seek divorce when necessary (a trait that was non-existent in pre-Islamic Arabia or the west in the past). Married working women have the right to contribute in the household expenses with the money that they make or they can keep it for themselves. Does that mean I am going to have my husband work all day while I sit and sip lemonade? Of course! It is my right to do so, but on a serious note, if Aisha were to practice her religious beliefs, she would have been free a long time ago. Sadly if her husband had this practiced as well, Aisha would not be in the situation that she is in today.
“Paradise is at the feet of the mother,” a phrase told by the prophet; was heard endlessly in my household. My mother would always say it with pride, as if she knew that the reason the Prophet stressed it was because the greatness of a nation depends upon the greatness of its mothers, something that Muslim families teach their children. The Holy Prophet used to stand up for respect, when his daughter Fatima came to visit him. He also helped his wives with the domestic chores of cooking and cleaning, offering a helping hand without degradation attached. He thus shows us by his examples, how mothers, daughters and wives (being women in general) should be respected. The following was recorded from the last sermon of the Prophet Mohammed, "Treat your women well and be kind to them for they are your partners and committed helpers."
Powerful individuals and groups claim to be Muslim, yet fail to practice the true principles of Islam. This is where a lot of women are told to feel justified at their oppression, even though what should be taught is the distinctions between cultural beliefs, and religious practices. The Prophet of Allah (Peace be Upon Him) said “Verily, women are the twin halves of men.”
In conclusion, we can say that Theodicy at the margins from an Islamic viewpoint creates a more free-thinking, humanistic way to attempt to solve the problem of evil. Facing each problem differently, it does not result in having only one answer, and one way, but rather multiple and more open ways to look at an issue. That is what makes theodicy at the margins more special than the rest, which in turn proves its importance. It will continue to empower its oppressed minorities and give common ground to those individuals who feel like they are suffering alone in this world, when the fact of the matter is, we all suffer together in our own times and ways. As we all deal with our problems in different ways, theodicy at the margins from this Islamic viewpoint, will give us a reason to keep believing in brighter days. Even though this world does not have flying bunnies and singing clouds, it at least offers us a theodicy that can take the problem of evil and attempt to solve it one day at a time.
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