I Am Not A Hostage

Joumana Haddad wrote a provocative piece for NOW News last week titled“Islamic Feminism: Stockholm Syndrome” in which she claims that any woman who claims to be a feminist and religious (Muslim, Jewish, or Christian specifically) is identifying with her captor, her hijacker, her tyrannical overlord.

To be clear, this is not a new claim.

It is also a claim that radically simplifies the problem and dramatically underestimates women and men working for justice.

I spent a good amount of my graduate career immersed in the writing and work ofMary Daly, second wave radical feminist philosopher, and wrote my second book partly about her political and theological work.  So, I get deep sustained criticism of monotheistic religion.  I respect it enormously.  I understand beyond measure the legitimacy of feminist criticism of patriarchal religion.  To some extent, in fact, I agree with it.

But when Daly and Haddad and others simply throw their hands up in disgust and declare a religion essentially and permanently incompatible with feminism, they miss the point.

Read the rest here