Convergences on religious exceptionalism: a synthesis of the arrow symposium on religious fundamentalisms on sexual and reproductive health and rights.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

While the ARROW-organised symposium at the 4th Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights (APCRSH) looked at Catholicism, Hinduism and Islam, we saw many convergences in the excellent presentations showing all too graphically what religious exceptionalism (1) is, and what impact it can have. I will summarise these convergences around six points:

1) Rhetoric: Religious exceptionalisms invoke strikingly similar rhetoric that describes what should be, a proper 'natural' or 'traditional' order. Zaitun Mohammed Kasim's presentation offered a particularly rich description of this rhetoric, together with prescriptive values (usually female chastity) and behaviour (obedience). Other rhetorical terms like 'honour' and 'morality' are used with reference to the 'family.'

2) Othering: Kalpana Kannabiran describes the links between intimate violence and inter-group violence in South Asia, particularly around the Partition between India and Pakistan, of women suffering from sexual assault, forced marriages, sterilisation, because they did not 'belong' to the right group. That 'othering' continues today, a vital part of the agenda of religious exceptionalists. To justify religious exceptionalism, we see how the 'enemy' has to be othered, through new mythologies and demonologies. Thus, for Christian exceptionalists like George W. Bush, the enemies are terrorists, forming an axis of evil. For Filipino Christian exceptionalists, the enemy is 'western imperialism' and its 'imposition' of contraception. For Hindu and Islamist exceptionalists, the enemies are 'western liberals.' All exceptionalists tend to identify 'secularism' and 'humanism' as the 'other.'

3) Arenas: There are many arenas in the battles being waged by religious exceptionalists. Within their own faith-based institutions, religious exceptionalists fight to impose their brand, their interpretation of their religion. The battles in the interpretations of religious dogmas and theologies and, in Islam, of syariah (religious law) often centre on the personal and on bodies, and on households, with definitions of women's impurity (epitomised in menstruation), and on their potentials as temptresses and seductresses. These arenas are important in the way they control daily life and discourse.

We saw, too, in the presentations, the dynamics of both globalisation and localisation, some of which go back in history, such as in the ways colonial laws coincided with the moralism of older local traditions. Today, conservatives wage global campaigns in international meetings and in the United Nations, and in individual countries and communities, challenging national laws as well as custom law (adat). Elizabeth Aguiling-Pangalangan's presentation highlights how a country's laws may be quite progressive, and yet face threats from religious exceptionalists invoking cultural traditions.

4) Impact: The presentations show how vicious the impacts of religious exceptionalism can be. Religious exceptionalism draws from the rhetoric of 'what should be,' and on the labeling of the 'other' to prescribe often severe forms of moral policing. More than marginalisation and stigmatisation, we see how religious exceptionalism engenders violence, assault, partitions and polarisation. At the same time, the presentations remind us to be alert to more subtle forms of control and ideologising, especially in the domestic sphere. The attempts to restrict divorce, for example, further sequester battered women, limiting their options to take action.

5) Strategies: The presentations do not stop with a description of problems. Throughout Asia, the speakers encourage the ensuring of the separation of religion and State and the strengthening of secular institutions especially around education. Moreover, Zaitun emphasises how we need to 'affect, broaden and redirect' the discourse, tackling the issues at all levels and arenas.

In retrospect, it would have been useful to look at the reasons why we have these disturbing trends toward religious exceptionalism. As early as the 19th century, western social scientists were already predicting the demise of religion and the rise of secularisation as the inevitable result of modernity and liberal democracies. By the 1950s and 1960s, scholars looking at religion were confident that secularisation was taking place all over the world.

Today, some of these secularisation theorists have admitted they were wrong. One of them, Peter Berger, wrote a book in 1999 whose title describes what has actually happened: The Desecularisation of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics. After the 9/11 attacks in the United States, social analysts like Samuel P. Huntington have talked about a 'clash of civilizations.' The battle is depicted as one between the 'west' with its Christian liberal values and the 'east with Islamist fundamentalism. In reality, especially around issues of gender and sexuality, we have seen an alliance of conservatives from Christian religions (notably Catholicism) and Islam to reverse secularisation, and to try to impose particular conservative religious beliefs within countries.

We need to pay more attention to the broader contexts of these exceptionalist movements, particularly the way they prey on people's fears: of modernisation, of personal freedoms, of democracy, even of empowering and liberating variations of religion. The 'othering' process is especially important, inflating people's fears of an external threat or of a local minority and driving them to the religious extremists who promise a return to tradition and order.

Even more importantly, Jashodhara Dasgupta reminds us in her presentation that religious exceptionalism does not just reproduce regressive religion, but also reproduces social inequities such as those of caste and class. Whenever politicians give in to the demands of religious exceptionalists to limit or even abolish reproductive health services, it is poor women who suffer the most.

The presentations have avoided prescribing one solution for all forms of religious exceptionalisms, but they all point to the need to continue dialogue and exchange of experiences among groups, across countries. More than defending secular institutions, we need as well to be able to defend, at a global level, secularisation itself, showing that it is in fact secularisation with its emphasis on choice that has allowed religious freedom, maybe even the current resurgence of religion.

Ultimately, we might yet see a resurgence of religion in a different sense, as more people speak out and say, "I am Muslim too," or "I am Catholic too," or "I am Hindu too" and, in the same breath, argue that "and I believe my religion does not conflict with my beliefs in gender equality and sexual freedom."

endnote 

(1) "Religious exceptionalism" is the view that one's own religion has a monopoly on truth and the interpretation of 'good,' usually accompanied by a notion that one's own God is the only 'true' God. Religious exceptionalists lobby to impose their values on an entire community, or even country, through public policies and laws. Some groups and individuals suggest this as an alternative term for "religious fundamentalism."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Michael Lim Tain is the Senior Country Program Advisor for the Philippines of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and is the Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of the Philippines, specialising in medical anthropology, gender and sexuality, ethnicities, and Southeast and East Asian Studies. He works closely with various Philippine and international health NGOs. Mike has been writing a twice-weekly column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer called "Pinoy kasi" for the last ten years.