The imperfect storm
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CNN’s special investigative report, “Lifting the Veil,” is clear about what happens to women where the Taliban, Islam’s fundamentalist sect, seeks to be — pretends to be — the real, the only, expression of Islam. In these places, women are imprisoned in their homes, allowed in public only with a man or at least heavily shrouded, forbidden to drive or travel alone, left uneducated, married off as children and abandoned on the streets when widowed. It’s a bleak, desperate situation. “God’s will,” they say — as have so many before them.
In theocratic governments, religions other than the state religions exist only by virtue of the fiat of the state and the state is devoted to maintaining the laws of the religion that underlies it. Too bad for everyone else. Like women.
Absolutism is the old wind.
Inclusiveness is the new wind.
And this new wind is blowing, as well. Benizar Bhutto, although a most religious woman, was also the proponent of a secular democratic government. In the secular state, all religions enjoy equal protection under the law. All people are safe from the excesses of religion. This is the wind of justice and equality. And it is equally religious as well as comfortably secular.
This is the wind that comes with those who believe that God created all people with human rights, that God calls women, as well as men, to go on doing God’s will, to continue co-creating the universe, to be moral agents. To vote, to minister, to teach, to think, to lead.
As a result, women everywhere, propelled by religion, are calling on both their religions and their governments to realize that as long as women can be suppressed, ignored, discriminated against, used, abused and made invisible — all in the name of God — humanity is only half human, government is suspect and religion itself is in danger of betraying itself.
Until the women’s agenda is addressed, until things change for women, until the Benizar Bhuttos, the Hillary Clintons, and the Bishop Kathryn Jeffers-Shorri’s of the world, leaders all, are the norm, not the exception, until domination and female invisibility stops being blamed on God, oppression will be the norm. Then nothing may change for women, true, but nothing will change for the rest of the world either. The fact is that whether they realize it or not, in the end, oppressors limit themselves as much as they limit those they oppress.
From where I stand, it seems clear that religions that only pretend to be religions ride on the past wind. Just look around you at all the women’s groups rising up all over the world. In the face of religious fundamentalism, all of them — like Benizar Bhutto — pay the price, of course. But, has anyone noticed, these groups of women leaders are not going away.
Be not mistaken: There is clearly another wind blowing that no number, no kind, of assassinations can quell.
» Joan Chittister Column | login or register to post comments | report misconduct | email this page | printer friendly version | 12901 reads
Submitted by sevenup on February 11, 2008 - 9:42am.
Madam Cardinal.If Benedict were to allow the ordination of women tomorrow would women be happy having achieved a landmark for women? Would it be a landmark for Catholicism? or would it give women more power? A woman could be president of the US, or Speaker of the house then she could definitely run a diocese or the entire church. For the present the avenue toward the power that is sought may not be through the priesthood. A lay person can be a cardinal and that may be what happens. How about an entire consultative body that would have the status of the college of cardinals made up entirely of women?
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Submitted by jolenecasa on January 18, 2008 - 6:45am.
Sr. Chittister has painted us a portrait of Benazir Bhutto which is compelling: a glamorous, Western-educated scion of a great South Asian political dynasty who represented the best hope for women and the poor against the dark forces of fundamentalism. She’s portrayed as everything we in the west would like a Muslim leader to be. From this position is launched the standard dark ages vs. enlightenment essay- a liberal tradition going all the way back to Voltaire.
But what we’re not being told here is that Ms. Bhutto was apparently the victim of Islamist militant groups that she allowed to flourish under her administrations in the 1980s and 1990s. It was under Ms. Bhutto’s watch that the Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, first installed the Taliban in Afghanistan. It was also at that time that hundreds of young Islamic militants were recruited from the madrassas to do the agency’s dirty work in Indian Kashmir. Everyone now knows how disastrous the rule of the Taliban turned out to be in Afghanistan, how brutally it subjugated women, created Al Qaeda and turned Kashmir into a Jihadist playground. For years, during her second tenure as PM, Bhutto lied brazenly to Washington about the extent to which Pakistan, with her approval, was covertly arming and funding the Taliban and Kashmir’s radicals. As Bhutto admitted in a 2002 interview: “Once I gave the go-ahead that they should get the money, I don’t know how much money they were ultimately given … I know it was a lot. It was just carte blanche.”
To the Bhutto goverment, women’s rights were on the back burner, on the front burner was their first objective: to keep a newly liberated Afghanistan yoked to Pakistan and out of India’s orbit. Out of this relationship would flow the riches of a Pakistan-controlled trucking industry circumventing Kabul – a modern Silk Road trade incorporating the markets of Central Asia – the never realized gas pipeline from Turkmenistan, and training camps, off the Pakistan reservation, for fighters deployed to Kashmir. Bhutto had an economic and political vision for Pakistan, one that depended largely on creating a compliant client state next door. Call it naivety, stupidity or bad luck, it all spun out of control and eventually resulted in Al Qaeda – now firmly interwoven with the Taliban which would plot from the start, her political demise.
But the primary opposition to her rule within Pakistan is the corruption and looting of the national treasury by her immediate family. Surely most NCR readers trust the reportage of The New York Times (being reliably liberal, secular, anti-catholic and anti-Bush) Before Bhuttomania clouded everyone’s judgement, the New York Times on Jan 9, 1998 published a special report entitled “Bhutto Clan Leaves Trail of Corruption in Pakistan” and House of Graft: Tracing the Bhutto Millions: A Special Report. This investigation outlines the Pakistani government’s case against her which is that more than $100 million was stolen from the country and secreted in foreign bank accounts and properties controlled by Bhutto’s family. Because she declared herself her party’s president for life and controlled all decisions it is difficult to get an answer to these very serious charges. She refused to discuss any of the specific deals outlined in the documents, and did not explain how her husband, (a dilettante Polo player who became known to all Pakistanis as “Mr. 10 Percent” because of his taste for massive bribes) had paid for his property and jewelry. Lamenting what she described as “the irreparable damage done to my standing in the world” by the corruption inquiry, she said her family had inherited wealth, despite their wealth not even coming close the scale implied by the huge bank deposits and luxury properties overseas.
The point of all this is not to disparage the memory of Ms. Bhutto but to expose the first intrinsic flaw in this month’s essay: The assertion that there is a neat divide between (corrupt) “Absolutism” and (clean) “Inclusiveness.” This is a facile position which the evidence doesn’t support. Bhutto’s party was both broadly inclusive and hopelessly corrupt.
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Submitted by butterfly on February 6, 2008 - 9:15am.
Jolenecasa,
Obviously, Bhutto had many supporters, and religious extremist terrorist did her in, not due to anything such as you write, but due to the fact she is a woman and she embodied the spirit of those in her country who were against religious extremism. Given a choice between a leadership of a Taliban-like regime, Pakistan stood up and said with the voice of their female leader that they will not tolerate them and, in essence said, ‘we will not wear a burka, we will not bow down to the extremes, but will for our country a democracy with rights for women and men.’
This is the main point that I understood from Sr. Joan’s writing: “Until the women’s agenda is addressed, until things change for women, until the Benizar Bhuttos, the Hillary Clintons, and the Bishop Kathryn Jeffers-Shorri’s of the world, leaders all, are the norm, not the exception, until domination and female invisibility stops being blamed on God, oppression will be the norm.”
You said, “But the primary opposition to her rule within Pakistan is the corruption and looting of the national treasury by her immediate family.”
The primary opposition to her rule were men who belive women should wear burkas, women should not have any rights, women should not be educated, women should shut up and be enslaved or they will be killed.
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Submitted by starlight on February 2, 2008 - 4:42pm.
Jolenecasa, I appreciated reading the above. I have to say that I agree with your position about the “neat divide”. It is difficult to present a “point of view” and not seem one-sided. Most are aware that there are “two sides of the story” and shades of gray everywhere. I’m certain Ms. Bhutto discovered this when she tried to rule Pakistan years ago. I would like to think she was sincere in her desire to benefit her people, but I am sure corruption was overwhelming and rampant, as it has been in that area (”the way business is done”—do I agree with it? No.) for many years, and continues to be.
I happen to know very wealthy people in the United States who have had much easier access to the “Powers That Be” in Rome (and elsewhere) than ordinary, everyday citizens. I remember being astounded, many, many years ago, when my wealthy and kindly Aunt mentioned travelling to Rome to get her daughter’s annulment(s) “taken care of”. This was under the “old rules” of the Church. Why? because people who have lots of money and “donate” huge sums to Church-related charities(for which they get a tax write-off.) do enjoy certain privilege. It’s a “fact of life” in our culture, as well. I’m sure Benezir Bhutto observed this while she was at Harvard, so she probably saw little awry with the way her Family managed its affairs.
The personal lives of “large contributors” are no different than ours, nor their personal failings and disappointments, yet they are fawned upon. They probably, at times,(don’t count on this–people get used to and feel “entitled” to certain treatment) may not even realize that they have a certain power and influence with those who require their charity, or that others could not have access to the same. They simply “move in certain circles” where things are easier, and accomplished more quickly. I am, of course, talking about people who have millions to contribute.
Power and money, let’s face it, wield disproportionate influence everywhere–Church AND State. So it has been for thousands of years. As sophisticated a form of Democracy as we think we have, we are dealing with issues of corruption in our own Government at the moment. I have no wish to argue this point on one side or the other–corruption just “is”, sad to say, and it is hard to root out completely, as much as one would wish to, and continue the effort for ” a level playing field” for all…People are human, and they are unfortunately influenced by the material, even if it is for a “good end”. Is it truly “Christian”? No. But it has taken our civilizations thousands of years to even realize that corruption, bribes, etc. are even questionable.
My point: “corruption” is “here, and now”, not just in Pakistan, and not just with the Bhuttos.
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The proclamation of the 
