麻豆社

As the Taliban tighten their grip across Afghanistan, the most poignant voices emerging from that troubled nation are those of its women. They have plenty to fear. The last time similar forces ruled their land, girls were denied education and women shut out of the workplace; strict dress codes and severe travel restrictions largely confining them to domestic settings. Reduced to servitude in the name of an interpretation of Islam that puts centre stage a deeply subordinate nature of women, one worlds away from that of the Muslim leaders, male and female, and their communities, that I work closely with across Manchester.

Some may seek to tell themselves that such ideologies are confined to places and cultures far away. Yet the tragic events in Plymouth last week sit ill with such complacency. Despite the perpetrator having cited no religious motivation, centuries of selective interpretations of biblical texts, bolstered by time honoured rituals, have left sections of Western Christianity colluding with toxic concepts of male entitlement. These form the breeding ground for multiple micro-aggressions, justified by appeal to faith or tradition, and tolerated by society at large. It is that cultural acceptance, reaching far beyond adherents of any faith, which sows seeds in men鈥檚 minds that, fed and watered by the incel (or involuntary celibate) groups, who bond in the darker corners of the Internet, can break out so suddenly and shockingly.

Specifically, the view that men are sexually entitled, and that in consequence women are culpable, first for arousing men鈥檚 desires, and then for failing to satisfy them on demand, finds ways to infect almost any ideology or religion, and requires equally subtle ways to confront it. As a young priest, I rebelled against the tradition in my own Church, where the bride鈥檚 father places her hand in that of her fianc茅, by insisting the best man then do the same with the groom. With a few words, I explained that this was to clarify that in marriage each receives the other as gift. Women are not items of property, handed on from one male to the next, with all the rights and privileges ownership affords.

Gender based entitlement lies only, and in some places all too literally, a stone鈥檚 throw away from gender based violence. We may well feel powerless in the face of the news from Afghanistan, where international intervention has over a century of failure to its name. But here at home, the blind eyes we turn to the cumulative damage done through petty prejudices, sexist remarks and unexamined customs, patterns of behaviour deeply embedded in our society, are the same eyes through which we stare in shock at what happened in Plymouth.

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