created by ApolloExpress on 18/01/2025 at 14:24 UTC
115 upvotes, 4 top-level comments (showing 4)
In modern times, there are news of Islamic countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan receiving international condemnation for their human rights violations, especially when it comes to the rights of women. In extreme cases, they are even accused of committing "gender apartheid". On the other hand, nations that have been established on Christian values, such as the West, are regarded as the most upfront in advocating for gender equality. However, that was not always the case. During the Dark Ages of Europe / the Golden Age of Islam, it was the Islamic nations that encouraged women to progress in education and other rights, while Christians treated their women as homemakers at best. So what changed? When did the switch happen?
Comment by AutoModerator at 18/01/2025 at 14:24 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
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Comment by veryhappyhugs at 19/01/2025 at 20:49 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I spy 28 comments and none approved, so I shall brave an answer here! I preface that I think your premise of comparison is mistaken here: i.e. that there is this universal standard of women's rights, and it is appropriate to judge Christian and Muslim societal trajectories in relation to this standard. There are a few ways to approach this knot, but my thrust today is: *the reason why Christian societies appear to be better at women's rights is because rights, as we understand it today, is a Christian inheritance. Hence we are unconsciously judging Islamic societies from a Christian/post-Christian standpoint*.
I want to start with the 'Dark Ages', because the notion is a bit of a historiographical fiction that unfortunately endures in the popular consciousness. The issue here is that what we call 'women's rights' significantly developed during the medieval period as well, and long predated (and even serve as *precursors to*) modern notions of civil liberties and gender equality.
One only has to look at the difference between pre-Christian Greco-Roman society and Christian ones. The French historian Fustel de Coulanges' book the Ancient City[1] pointed out how Roman domestic religions saturated the social structure of Greco-Roman life. Like the Chinese, ancestor worship was passed patrilineally and the continuation of the familial ancestral worship tradition is of paramount importance. The necessary implication is that women were peripheral to this family-religion.
1: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ancient-City-Religion-Institutions-Greece/dp/0801823048
Larry Siedentop, in his book Inventing the Individual[2], further pointed out that since ancestral worship was often tied to land, this meant women cannot inherit properties. Yet, by the 6th century AD, the Germanic king Chilperic proclaims indignantly:
2: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qdt2p
"A long-standing and wicked custom of our people denies sisters a share with their brothers in their father's land, but I consider this wrong, since my children came equally from God... Therefore, my dearest daughter, I hereby make you an equal and legitimate heir with your brothers, my sons." (p. 143, Ibid)
This is an astonishing claim. Like the Romans, the Germanic kingdoms also had patrilineal inheritance, and this instinct was challenged, if not yet entirely broken, by Pauline Christianity's radical claims of there being 'neither male nor female... for all are one in Christ Jesus'. If we follow Siedentop's arguments, this was because Christianity, with its supplanting of ancestor worship (among other factors), led to the breaking of the Roman *paterfamilias*' power. No longer was the preservation of ancestral continuity the purview of families, but there is a new kind of spiritual family based around the nascent church. The religious/social institutions that limited women were, to an extent, broken.
(part 2 below)
Comment by [deleted] at 19/01/2025 at 03:55 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
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Comment by [deleted] at 19/01/2025 at 20:20 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
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