HomeStatus of Women in Christianity
By Magdy Abd Al-Shafy
The woman has suffered throughout history and was always inferior to man. Perhaps the worst picture given to a woman can be accredited to Christianity and Judaism. Christianity and Judaism, being tampered by human beings, went to every extreme in giving women every heinous picture, the rationale being the Original Sin. Eve, according to the Bible and the Torah, incited Adam to eat from the forbidden tree. Unmindful of the fact that Adam himself took part in this disobedience, they ascribe every evil to Eve. All of the female off-springs, in the sight of the church, are to inherit the same picture. We are sure that these writings can't be God's word. These words are interpolated by people. God's mercy encompasses all his creatures. The western media should focus criticism on these writings instead of misrepresenting Islam as a religion that oppresses women. In this short study we will introduce the opinions of the church and the rabbis, not God’s, about women. Read these few lines:
Burn the Daughter!
"And the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire."(Leviticus 21:9)
Comment
A priest's daughter, if found to have lost her virginity without marriage, can receive the death penalty, but in the form of incineration.
How many fundamentalist priests who so easily condemn others would carry out the burning of their daughters if they found them "whoring"? (See also Genesis 38:24)
Cut Off Her Hand!
"When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her." (Deuteronomy 25:11-12)
Comment
A wife would naturally wish to come to the aid of her husband in any way she could if he desperately struggled with an opponent, but the Hebrew law specifically forbade a wife to help her husband in distress if that support consisted of her grabbing the enemy's genitals in an effort to stifle his onslaught. The penalty? Amputation of the hand that fondled the genitals!
Only in an overly obsessive male dominated culture could men create such atrocious laws. As such, the penis ranked sacrosanct in the minds of men (as it still stands today). If a male lost his penis for any reason, he would lose the right to enter a congregation of God. (See Deuteronomy 23:1)
