By Ben Blushi
During a discussion I had in Korçë to promote the novel I Am Muslim, I also spoke about the very masculine character of religions.
All religions, but especially Christianity and Islam, have been used by men to subjugate women.
The holy books say that women must cover themselves and lower their gaze in order to restrain men’s lust, while men are not asked to exercise the same restraint.
If both genders are equally exposed to bodily desire, then just as women are required to cover themselves, men should also have been required to do so in order not to arouse women’s desire.
Imagine if this religious requirement had become a custom and men lowered their eyes every time they saw a woman—how much violence, pain, and how many murders would have been avoided in the history of humanity, a history filled with so many crimes that men have committed against women.
Unfortunately, religions have given men the right to decide over women.
Both Christianity and Islam have exclusively male prophets, and not a single major prophet is a woman.
These prophets took more than one wife and very often treated them like slaves, regardless of their age.
This practice continues even today in many countries, as also happens in my novel I Am Muslim, which shows how a 70-year-old man married a 12-year-old girl.
Along this same masculine line has gone the appointment of those who were meant to regulate the relationship between God and people.
Clerics are all men.
No priest is a woman, and no imam is a woman.
How different the relationship between human beings and faith would be if the Pope were a woman, or if bishops were women, or if in mosques the call to prayer were sung by the beautiful voices of women.
Religions would be more beautiful and far more peaceful.
Women would have gained more rights centuries ago.
But this did not happen.
Men have kept a monopoly over God’s affairs, using God to dominate their families.
This masculine aspect of religions is undoubtedly one of their darkest sides.
This alone is enough to understand how religions have been shaped by narrow earthly interests and not at all by the interests of the societies in which they were born.
God himself has been depicted as a misogynist who has given more rights to men than to women, and this has unfortunately been accepted even by women themselves.
From the very first day, when He created woman from a man’s rib, God chose to side with men.
This alone is enough to understand that even God himself is a creation of men’s imagination.
Men created God, giving Him their harsh traits and their insensitivity.
From early antiquity, men have set about carving the image of God, who not only has masculine features but also a masculine mindset.
A God who creates a woman from a man’s rib actually goes against the laws of nature, which have determined that man is created—born—from a woman.
During the debate in Korçë, one of the attendees told me that in Christianity there are female saints.
That is true.
But they become such only after death.
If women do not die, they do not serve the Church as a model.