“Religion: opium of the people and ally of the patriarchy”

Demonstrations continue in memory of Mahsa Amini, who died for having worn her veil incorrectly, at the unspeakable paroxysm of the oppression of women. In societies where our rights are most undermined, such as in Iran or Afghanistan, we no longer even bother to try to hide inequalities, we claim them as a way of life. The same cannot be said of the “soft” version of Islam, nor of the other religions which lose themselves in delirious arguments in order to find emancipatory benefits in their obscurantism.

Claiming to have a feminist approach to a religion, any religion, means having to go up a 90 degree slope. Thus, Giorgia Meloni, with her slogan « God, fatherland and family », struggles to hide her convictions as to the destiny of our female body: to have white children, and many. But the opium of the people is as effective as hard drugs. Some theologians now assert that “ your man will dominate you(in Genesis) would actually refer to a temporary and unwanted situation by God, caused by human disobedience.

Another example, we readily read that the veil would be a fantastic tool of emancipation because choice-of-woman. However, if the choice of each human being must be respected and its conditions of exercise guaranteed, this does not confer on it an emancipatory scope. Besides, if you eat meat, it’s your choice, but a priori it will not bring you closer to veganism.

What is a choice when it is conditioned by dogmas whether they are religious or not? With the poor woman, it is worse. As Flora Tristan wrote, we can say that she is the« proletarian of the proletarian ». The choice of my immigrant grandmother to follow my grandfather who had selected her on a photograph to another country, and to remain a housewife all her life, married and locked up at the top of a low-rent housing tower, was it an emancipatory choice because it was his choice-of-woman? In reality, did it have the material, financial and intellectual elements to determine itself more freely?

Whether the argument lies in the misinterpretation of the texts or in the necessarily emancipatory nature of a choice, it prevents in any case from carrying out a reflection on the role of religions in enslavement. I do not claim to be outside the patriarchy, in a jar of formaldehyde or cum to judge what is an emancipatory choice or not. On the other hand, I claim the right to ask us the question.

On a human scale, our enslavement has always existed in religious practices and dogmas. It is impossible to attribute the cause of our oppression to any particular religion. In summary, Islam is no more stupid than any other.