Albanian Virginity, Times Front Page

Followup: Muslim Virginity, Times Front Page

by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

 

On June 25, the New York Times published another non-news socio-cultural front page feature article that addressed the gradual disappearance of sworn virgin institution among Muslim and Christian Albanians. Here is the description of the practice:

For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority — including the obligation to avenge her father's death.

The new article addressed Muslim conceptions of sexuality as did the previous story entitled Surgery Offers Muslim Women Illusion of Virginity, but this time the Muslim aspect was deemphasized and mentioned only in a single paragraph on the second page:

In Albania, a majority Muslim country in the western Balkans, the Kanun [or traditional Code of Conduct of Leke Dukagjini] is adhered to by Muslims and Christians. Albanian cultural historians said the adherence to medieval customs long discarded elsewhere was a byproduct of the country's previous isolation. But they stressed that the traditional role of the Albanian woman was changing.

Another paragraph on the article's first page indirectly indicates that some Albanian Muslims follow this practice:

Ms. Keqi lorded over her large family in her modest house in Tirana, where her nieces served her brandy while she barked out orders. She said living as a man had allowed her freedom denied other women. She worked construction jobs and prayed at the mosque with men. Even today, her nephews and nieces said, they would not dare marry without their "uncle's" permission.

Even though the New York Times is a questionable source for information on sociology and cultural anthropology, the material in this report provides evidence both of

• the diversity within the Muslim world with regard to sexuality and also of 
  
• the crossing of religious boundaries by various practices and customs associated with gender.

The earlier article discussed hymenoplasty and revirgination within an essentialist framework that implicitly denigrated Muslim attitudes or behavior

• assumed to be uniform or undifferentiated throughout the Islamic world and
  
• supposed to be completely distinct from Christian or Jewish beliefs and practices.

In contrast, the analysis of sworn virgins refrains from the usual NY Times disparagement of Muslims and Islam probably because of the apparent similarity of "sworn virgin" customs to transvestitism and transgender ideals vociferously defended by the Gay International, which is a term used by Columbia Professor Joseph Massad to describe Western homosexual politics in his recently published book entitled Desiring Arabs.

Modern Western gay politics has almost certainly no connection to the very ancient and once fairly common institution of sworn virgins. Greek myths associated with Artemis and Atalanta are almost certainly based in legends of sworn virgins while the Biblical story of Sarah probably contains some core elements associated with a related sworn virgin mythology.

Remnants of the "ideology" associated with sworn virgins seem to have persisted in both Christian and Jewish cultures in the respect and honor accorded to the British virgin queen Elizabeth I and to Channa Rachel Werbermacher, the Maid of Ludmir, who functioned as a Hassidic Rebbe during the nineteenth century.

Queen Elizabeth eschewed marriage in order to avoid losing authority to a male king while Judaism generally rejects the combination of scholarly authority and marriage for women as indicated by Rashi's account within his commentary on Babylonian Talmud tractate Avodah Zarah 18b of the suicide of the second century CE Talmudic sage Beruriah after she was seduced by one of her husband's students.

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Harvard: Jews Better Than Muslims

According to Professor Harry Lewis

Letter to the Editor of the Boston Globe

 

Dear Editor:

 

Harvard Professor Harry Lewis should probably spend more time in working on computer programs and less in writing op-ed columns like A separate and unequal exercise (Boston Globe, March 25, 2008, see below).

 

Setting aside six hours so that Muslim women can exercise without the presence of men is just a minor supplement to providing separate locker rooms for men and women.

 

Such minor accommodation has no similarity to the ROTC total exclusion of homosexuals.  If Lewis fails to understand the difference, perhaps he should find a less prestigious school where he can become a member of the faculty.

 

In any case, some religious Jewish female students as well as lesbians uncomfortable with male harassment will probably avail themselves of the women-only six hours at Harvard athletic facilities.

 

Lewis crossed the line into Jewish Islamophobic incitement by suggesting that Jews are somehow ethically superior to observant Muslims when he comments, "Everyone can enjoy Harvard's kosher food."

 

Lewis is wrong. Kosher wine that has not been "cooked" according to halakhah (Jewish law) becomes ritually unfit if a non-Jew touches or pours it. While Harvard Hillel is unlikely to provide such wine at services or meals, Chabad does use it at invitation-only gatherings that exclude non-Jews in order to increase the feeling among Jews that they are separate or "chosen."

 

With even more obnoxiousness both Harvard Hillel and Harvard Chabad sponsor Birthright Israel.

 

This program gives Jewish students a free trip to Israel as their birthright even though the vast majority of modern Jews have no ancestral connection to Palestine whatsoever as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has recently pointed out in Shattering a National Mythology (Ofri Ilani, March 21, 2008) and in An invention called 'the Jewish people' (Tom Segev, February 29, 2008).

 

Birthright Israel excludes descendants of the native Palestinian population that Eastern European Jewish invaders ethnically cleansed in 1947-8.

 

The program is a racist slap in the face to all Palestinian members of the Harvard community.

 

Jewish faculty and staff should engage in some self-examination before dumping on Harvard Muslims, and the University administration should carefully consider whether Jewish bigots have enmeshed Harvard in a pattern of racist practices jeopardizing the University's status as a 501 (c) (3) organization to which contributions are tax deductible.

 

Harry Lewis should apologize to Harvard Muslims forthwith, and the University should discipline him for the moral turpitude associated with public expression of prejudice.

 

Joachim Martillo HC '78

Boston, MA

ThorsProvoni@aol.com

 

 

HARRY LEWIS A separate and unequal exercise By Harry Lewis  |  March 25, 2008 PERHAPS it is simple politeness for Harvard University to close its secondary gym to men for six hours a week so conservative Muslim women can exercise without men seeing their skin. Religious accommodations are usually uncontroversial, but this is different. Everyone can enjoy Harvard's kosher food; half the students are excluded from the gym, however briefly. Surely only those with the most mean-spirited interpretation of gender equality could object - yet complain they did. "Today I was forced to wait outside in the cold until 5," wrote one man. "The policy seems sexist and discriminatory." "These hours have been put in place for equality reasons," read Harvard's announcement. The decision apparently resulted from a paradoxical collaboration between the Women's Center, which greets visitors with a sign reading "All Genders Welcome," and adherents to a religion that imposes unequal social strictures on men and women. Harvard didn't explain its thinking, but it seems to have adopted a postmodern version of equality: Equality might be achieved only by imposing unequal access, if those seeking equality do not share the consensus view. Freedom is useless without comfort, so liberation of some might require exclusion of others. Whatever the logic, the university failed in its educational responsibility. It missed an opportunity to model for its students the kind of moral reasoning it expects of them. The resulting standards are inconsistent, and the muddle has a history. This conflict is rooted in Harvard's uncompromising interpretation of equality since 1977, which was a response to its decidedly unequal treatment of women for most of its past. When Harvard assumed full responsibility for women's education from Radcliffe, it adopted an absolute nondiscrimination standard. Everything is open to men and women on an equal basis - nothing is "separate but equal" except some athletic teams and choral singing groups. Most student organizations desegregated voluntarily. The venerable all-male Final Clubs, which the dean's office used to coordinate, refused to admit women and were severed from the university. Harvard's nondiscrimination policies now cover "race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, age," and a few other things, and the same absolutism applies to all categories. Harvard has no ethnic or single-sex housing. Women's groups have to allow male members. The Black Students' Association can't close white students out of its meetings. And, until now, the athletic department didn't bar the doors of the gym against male students. Absolutism is not the only ethical approach to discrimination issues. Fraternities and sororities fall afoul of Harvard's equal-access policy, but most colleges find them unproblematic in principle. Perhaps Harvard has just been out of step with that "real world" in which constructive segregation and special interests sometimes trump integrationist principles. The new stance seems generous and tolerant: Be nice to people, even if it means excluding others, as long as the benefit is significant and the injury is minor. Which brings us to ROTC. Harvard bans ROTC because the military violates the "sexual orientation" part of Harvard's nondiscrimination policy. Harvard students can participate in ROTC at MIT, but Harvard will not provide them meeting space or any other support - even bus fare down Massachusetts Avenue. If there were ever a special case, this is it. ROTC's discriminatory policy is US law. Until Congress repeals that law, Harvard should accommodate ROTC anyway, in the interests of the nation and of Harvard students wishing to serve it. The counterargument goes, however, that if ROTC were accommodated, the benefit to cadets would be far less significant than the injury to gays and lesbians. Indeed, some claim that no price would be too high for Harvard to pay for uncompromising adherence to its nondiscrimination policy, even the loss of all government funding, if it came to that. Is the gym exception merely a reasonable kindness to conservative Muslim women? Then Harvard's failure of courtesy to its cadets suggests that politics determine what forms of discrimination are inoffensive. That is not what Harvard should be teaching. Tolerance is good, but absolute nondiscrimination is preferable to such politicized tolerance. Harry Lewis is professor of computer science at Harvard and former dean of Harvard College. He is the author of "Excellence Without a Soul: Does Liberal Education Have a Future?" and coauthor of "Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion," which will be published in June.

© Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
 

 

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