This was honestly one of the more difficult readings I’ve done yet. And it shouldn’t have been. It seemed so simple on the surface. There’s Mary from the Christian traditions. There’s Fatima from the Islamic traditions. Both women. Both expressed through the lens of religion. Their images are controlled by men. Everything should line up nicely.
But it didn’t. It took me a while to see that they were used by men as organizing principles in their respective religions. They each needed to be presented as holy – their sanctity became preservation vessels. As virgin and theotokos, Mary helped preserve doctrine about Jesus, particularly in the formation of the idea of the universal Church. Fatima preserved the lineage of the Imams which stabilized and legitimized the genealogical line of the Imams for the Shi’ites.
As figures, neither one had any kind of freedom. They each played a role of stabilizer, in the ways that each religion needed their stabilization. Islam was going through a crisis of legitimacy between Shiite and Sunni. The presence of Fatima allowed for some extra claims to be put forth. However, Christianity was suffering from some theological difficulties, and the Merovingian church was dealing with some doctrinal heresies surrounding them of which Mary helped stabilize Jesus as the God man. Each had to be submissive and miraculous to serve their purpose for the church or the Shiites respectively.
Through relics and shrines and amulets, the ideas of each woman was made to enter the consciousness of the faithful by becoming part of rituals performed. Prayers and miracles, mysterious lights, inscriptions in mosques, Or Marian statues or cults of breast milk even – The idea of each of these women was used by men in ways that were larger than life and incorporated and woven into every facet of religious life for their own purposes; Control and stabilization.
Both women were held up as exemplary yet untouchable. No woman could ever hope to reach such levels and so with the men in control of the ideas of the greatest of women, it automatically put every woman as subordinate to the men. This power was something I was having a lot of trouble wrapping my brain around and It was only after considering all of the many many little ways that control was exerted and how, did it start to crystallize just how pervasive this control really is and what effect it had on women and their roles that were expected.
What felt lacking in the text though, was how was it really a hagiography. Neither woman was really a saint to be imitated and I couldn’t see how each of them were inspiring to the women from the perspectives of each of the religious bodies. It’s a great text on describing systems of power and how they functioned theologically and structurally in these two cases. But it wasn’t really about Mary or Fatima but of how the ideas of each were abused by men on tremendous-in-scope, systemic levels. Perhaps it is the largeness of it is why I had struggled so.
I would be interested in a contrasting empowering take that also avoided being devotionals. There must be benefits besides these negativities even if they are temporary or limited in scope; some kind of empowerment within the framework of submissiveness that the women found inspiring and hopeful despite the abuses of these imageries by men.
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