A Second Battle of Tours II

Introduction:

Our intent is to contrast some of the key differences between the biblical Christian faith and Islam, and to do so in a way that leads us to see the fountainhead of those differences, which is the triune nature of God, over against the radical monotheism found in Islam. In other words the differences are not arbitrary, but rather flow from our respective understandings of God.

The Text:

“For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man” (1 Cor. 11:7).

          “A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones” (Prov. 12:4).

Overview:

As a congregation, we have spent a good bit of time studying the biblical understanding of the relationship of women to men. We have done this in part because it is an important part of our lives, and we all obviously need to learn how to be Christians in our marriages and homes. But another reason for doing this is because the Bible plainly teaches the submission of wives to their own husbands (Eph. 5: 22; Col. 3: 18; 1 Cor. 11:3). The word submission is one that a few have not allowed the Bible to define, and have rather imported their own ideas of what “submission must mean.” Not surprisingly, this carnal understanding has meant there has been an unfortunate growth of assumptions about women in conservative Christian circles that can be called more Muslim than Christian. But we see in our two texts this morning that a Christian woman’s submission is her glory. She is valued by her husband the way Christ values the Church, and she is exalted to a place of glory and prominence. She is not wrapped up and hidden away at home, but rather is her husband’s glory and crown. But we reject, just as strongly, the decadent notion that women are to be paraded around like they were hoochie-mamas—which is not a word you ordinarily hear in sermons. Rather, they are honored as ladies, as Christian women, as types and figures of the Church.

The Source of the Problem:

With raw monotheism, the basic relationship that the god must have with the world is one of raw power. Everything is a power relation, and the fundamental response to this power is one of craven submission. Because we become like what we worship (Ps. 115: 8), if a man worships a god like this, then when he gets into a place where he can wield power, that is precisely what he does. Authority is not incarnational (because there is no such thing as an Incarnation), but rather authority becomes an excuse to be “the boss.”

What Islam Teaches:

The problems are not in spite of the Koran, but find their source in the Koran. “Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other . . . Good women are obedient . . . As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them, forsake them in beds apart, and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no further action against them” (Surah 4: 34).  Notice the emphasis on force or coercion. Because men are in a position to demand, nothing is seen as wrong with them demanding. Force provides its own justification, and men are not being unlike Allah when they do this. 

Women are held to be deficient and inferior. This is not the submission of an equal, the kind of submission that Christ rendered to the Father (Phil. 2: 5-6). For example, two women are required to serve as witnesses comparable to one man (Surah 2:282). To show why this is true, one hadith puts it this way: “The Prophet said, ‘Isn’t the witness of a woman equal to half of that of a man?’ The women said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘This is because of the deficiency of a woman’s mind.’” And, following the example of Allah, those in an inferior position may always be forced

Some Ramifications:

This obviously has unfortunate sexual ramifications. “If you fear that you cannot treat orphans with fairness, then you may marry other women who seem good to you: two, three, or four of them. But if you fear that you cannot maintain equality among them, marry only or any slave-girls you may own” (Surah 4:3). Notice two things here. The first is that the verse assumes that it is the weaker man who might not be up to polygamy. Contrast this with the Christian example of the godly Christian leader: he must be a “one-woman man” (1 Tim. 3:2; Tit. 1:6).  Second, notice that the limit of four is not on women generally, but rather on wives. You can have as many slave girls as you want (Surah 70:30). This comes out in yet another way in the doctrine of multiple companions for Muslim men in Paradise. “Gardens watered by running streams, where they shall dwell forever: spouses of perfect chastity . . .” (Surah 3:15ff). These women are called houris; there are 72 of them per man, and each man has the stamina of one hundred men. And Shi’ite Islam follows a variant reading of the Koran (4:24) that allows for term-limit marriages—which amounts to a “rent-a-wife” program. And consider this: “You shall not force your slave-girls into prostitution in order that you may enrich yourselves, if they wish to preserve their chastity” (Surah 24:33). Notice the conditional here, that little word if. It should not take too much reflection for Christians to decide that something is seriously and pathologically distorted here.

Fanaticism Does Not Understand Itself:

In March 2002, fifteen girls were killed in a fire at their school in Mecca. Because only women were in the school, they had shed their outer garments, and when the fire broke out, they fled the building in that condition. The Saudi religious police (the muttawa) fought to chase them back into the burning building, preferring their deaths to any public displays of immodesty. The muttawa battled the police and firemen who were trying to get the school’s doors open.

Pretended Common Sense:

There are many complications when we in the West assume that certain standards are “common sense,” and are common to all human societies. The problem with this assumption is that it is just flat wrong. Much of our “common sense” is actually Christian. Now when we consider how we as a society will treat women, it becomes immediately obvious that a society cannot be “neutral” on which set of assumptions we will codify in our laws.

Take a more realistic mindset from the British colonial experience in Hindu India. Sir Charles Napier, a British general there, had this to say when some Hindus complained about restrictions on suttee—the custom of burning widows alive on their husbands’ funeral pyres. “You say that it is your custome to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”