August 16, 2015
Reading the msn.com homepage the other morning, I couldn’t help but be drawn to the picture of Kayla Mueller, an American woman held captive by ISIS:
According to the AP story, which was according to “intelligence officials”, “Kayla Mueller was repeatedly forced to have sex with ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” Please follow the link to this appalling story:
It is difficult to imagine anything more egregious violation of a woman’s person – a captive, essentially powerless to defend herself. It is a depraved, horrendous act by a man who at least for the time being, has the power to control her. It is disgusting really – and should offend everyone. It demonstrates all that we fear most about these so-called terrorists, and their willingness to abuse and oppress women! It is a vile and terrifying reflection on the nature of desperate men the world over.
Sadly it is also all too common. A sad commentary on the systematic global oppression of women by men. One where women are treated as either second class citizens or as property, and so subject to the whim of men in power to exploit them in any way they choose.
As I prayed and meditated about her safe return, thinking about her story, I was suddenly reminded of our own culture – America’s culture – of violence against women. I began to recall stories I hear every day from all over this great land about women who fear for their very lives in their own homes right here in America. About women who express a feeling they are being held captive – hostages in their own homes, terrorized by the very men who claim to love them.
Then other stories come to mind. Stories about young girls abused and raped by men, growing up in a land which seems to condone violence against women. Women are not safe in their own homes, but neither are they on the streets, at the workplace, on campuses everywhere.
And then the stories about women who are viciously beaten, even hospitalized by the men who say they love them. And worse. Women who are brutally raped – again by men they know – their husbands or boyfriends, or those who claim to care about them. And, my God, women who are murdered! Again and again I am reminded that it is men who do these things. We have all seen the video.
But how could this be you may well wonder? Men not only control the levers of political and economic power, they make laws, enforcement of laws, rule on the interpretation of the law, and operate the legal system that finds fault. Am I overstating the situation? Hardly!
Consider this unfortunate and inconvenient truth: there are men right now in America, in high political office, and others who aspire to high political office, who advocate for such laws that will control women even more so. Imagine that by the “rights” they espouse and laws they promote, should a woman like Kayla Mueller become pregnant as the result of her rape – the absolute violation of her person, that here in America she could not legally terminate her pregnancy.
Yes, the leader of ISIS is sick and depraved and must be stopped, but what about the violence perpetrated against women right here? Jesus said,
“Why do you focus on the speck that is in your brother’s eye but do not consider the beam that is in your own eye?
“How can you say to your brother,
‘Let me pull the speck out of your eye,’
“And, look, there is a beam is in your own eye?
“You hypocrite!
“First cast the beam out of your own eye then you will see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.”
(The Word 2.0, page 97)
Sad as it is, I am grateful that article was published for its power to draw all our attention to such issues. Men hide behind a set of religious beliefs they themselves invented to justify and rationalize their behavior, and so cover their abuse of women. As we discuss in the book, this also illuminates a painful aspect of the imbalance that still exists between God’s masculine and feminine aspects – the male and the female, man and woman. My hope is that women everywhere will read this more honest telling of Jesus’ story, and so come to no longer fear the spirituality he actually teaches.
Namaste
Miguel
