ho-hum and then some

Submitted by john w mcginley (United States), May 25, 2004 at 14:10

Islam is six centuries younger than Christianity and about eleven centuries younger than Judaism (if you date Judaism as an organized religion roughly from the time of Ezra). It takes a while to get the kinks out of the sytem.

Islam is going through its "Crusader" period and its period of adjustment to Modernity/Enlightenment AT THE SAME TIME. Enough to wreck any religion. Don't get me wrong. When someone has a knife to my throat my thought are not of "why are they like that and why does this guy hate me." Still, it is worth considering.

For the record, some sects of Orthodox Judaism are still going thorugh this woman thing. Christianity had to turn the ideal of a woman into the oxomornic "virgin mother" before letting a woman into the pantheon. (Wasn't there room in the Trinity for a woman for God's sake?) In Judaism the sub-current of the myth of Lilith was always there: woman as unbound eros casuing destruction to men. [[Curiously, feminist Jews have taken up the emblem of Lilith as theirs.]] Then there are refined, sophisticated, secular males in Western garb who wear their support for feminism on their sleeves while entertaining the worst of misogynistic sexual fantasies and even acting them out. Female desire. A problem, at least for males, not just muslims. "Can fifty million Frenchmen be wrong?" What DO women want? Even feminists are not honest about this conundrum. female desire: it IS power. I'm coming back as a woman. John

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