Nag Hammadi (Egypt), we know how Mary and her feminine wisdom have been completely wiped out from the earth’s dominant culture. Coming from Ancient Greek, the expression gnōstikos means knowledge and enlightenment. There was no need for an Ulama class or a temple in the Gnostics’ world of faith which would later be accused of heresy by revisionist Christian ideologues. They defended the idea of God as being a pre-eminently inner experience, thus opposing a standardization which might happen during the process of teaching religion. God was one’s own skin, awareness, dream, intuition, desire. In order to possess gnosis (just as it was the case with the Qalandariyyah as a counter-movement against Orthodox Islam throughout history), neither intermediaries, monarchs, imams, bishops, nor priests were required. God was an eternal father and mother figure within reach, who at the same time was characterized by a human simplicity. Over the centuries, this place was taken over by a punishing, ruling, commanding, male-shaped God. It is important to recall here that the expression “anthropomorphic” has evolved from the Greek anthropos, which characteristically denotes a man, just like the prefix in “anthropology,” “anthroposemiotic,” or “anthropocentric,” giving these words a clearly “masculine” connotation. While Orthodox Christians cursed the early Gnostics and deleted them from their teachings, the tradition to which they adhered was Judaism, which considered God the Absolutely Other ←xi | xii→(cf. Buber and also Levinas).1 The discrimination against women “committed” by a God who listens to Orthodox Jewish men praying “Blessed are you, LORD our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has not made me a woman”2 is certainly closed to debate in many cultures.
However, as a consolation it should be said that some things appear to change in various places today. I do not know whether Elizabeth Jane Holden Lane’s appointment as a British Anglican bishop, the rediscovery of the feminine spirit in early Christianity, or the fact that the Gospel of Mary, which is full of erotic symbols and feminine images of God, has been translated into so many languages are in some way indirectly related. Yet, a woman as a “head of the church” remains a member of a systematized structure within the limits of masculine domination. It would probably be more cautious to see a female bishop as a modern achievement, rather than a women’s revolution. After all, the irreparable emptiness resulting from great losses which we have been suffering throughout the adventures of humankind is haunting us in the form of our painful history. The words of the Apostle Paul still have a certain effect: “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God” (1 Corinthians 11:3).3
In the religion of Islam, the whole situation is undoubtedly not favorable to women. Many Muslim clerics directly threaten women’s human rights with their outrageous speeches and humiliating rhetoric in public spaces, on television programs, in mosques. Their greatest concern is to regulate women’s social lives, from their sexuality to their marriage, from the inheritance law to everyday life, while – with the help of the Qur’anic text and hadith quotes – always keeping in mind men’s main interests. It might be sufficient to give only one example from the Qur’an, without mentioning the traditions summarized in hadith which regard women as dirty, satanic, and inferior in Islamic culture:
Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has made one of them to excel the other, and because they spend (to support them) from their means. Therefore, the righteous women are devoutly obedient (to Allah and to their husbands), and guard in the husband’s absence what Allah orders them to guard (e.g., their chastity, their husband’s property, etc.). As to those women on whose part you see ill conduct, admonish them (first), (next) refuse to share their beds, (and last) beat them ←xii | xiii→(lightly, if it is useful), but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means (of annoyance). (Surah An-Nisa [4:34])4
The reason why I have briefly described the patriarchal understanding of the three celestial religions coming from the Abrahamic tradition is the initially religious characteristic of the word “namus.” As explained in this book, “namus” can have different meanings ranging from sexual honor, collective honor, dignity, pride, to chastity and modesty. However, “namus” is predominantly the responsibility of women, whereas men are rather “completed” by “şeref” (male honor), keeping dignity, pride, and virility in reserve. For instance, the expression “erdem” in the sense of “virtue” is a purely masculine word. In Turkish, “er-” is a part of “erkek” (i.e., “man”), while “virtue” in English is derived from Latin “virtus” which defines the high moral qualities of men. In this respect, even words like “virtual” and “virtuoso” are completely related to men. But let’s get back to the actual notion of “namus”: women are without any doubt paying the social price of this un-world-ly, non-human word. After all, the woman not only has to carry her own but also the man’s “namus,” according to the laws handed down from the heavens.
If we go back to the origins of this word, we can get a glimpse of a rather creepy landscape that shows how male-dominated morals have covered the culture of the whole world. “Namus” has roots in many languages. Some theologians claim that it comes from the Greek expression “νόμος/nómos,” meaning “law,” while others think that it was used to refer to the first part of the Jewish Bible, the Torah. It is said that the form used by Islamic historian Waraka ibn Nawfal comes from Syriac, and that Muslims matched this use with one by the archangel Gabriel (see Fuat Aydın). Interestingly, this expression, which we can find in Arabic pre-Islamic poetry, does not exist in the Qur’an, which shares the same language tradition, but was frequently used in the hadith literature as the main source of Islamic theology. The story of an alleged revelation recorded by Waraka ibn Nawfal (a contemporary of prophet Muhammad) as narrated in classic Islamic sources is very striking. While describing how a revelation came to him, the prophet tells his wife Khadija that he is afraid of what has happened to him. Khadija, who finds it difficult to make sense of this experience, takes the prophet to the well-respected Waraka ibn Nawfal, who is known for having accepted Christianity before Islam, who read the Bible in Arabic, and wrote Hebrew in Arabic letters. Waraka answers the prophet, who tells him about his encounter with Gabriel: “What you see here is namus brought down to Moses.”5
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Throughout history, “namus” has been used in Arabic (nâmûs’), Hebrew and Syriac (nūmūs or nīmūs/נומוס), ancient Greek (nómos/νόμος), and Persian (افتخار) texts as pure spirit, custom, law, and as associated with Gabriel, depending on the respective context. We can therefore say that, seen from today’s perspective, this expression contains a most profoundly integrated link: the pure spirit is both the carrier of the divine law (i.e., Gabriel) and at the same time God’s law. “Namus” comes down to earth as a divine command.
The evolution of the word “namus” over time is quite striking. In French and English, compound names with “nomo+” or “nome+” have the functions of order, law, regulation, or restriction. In the names of various disciplining categories like “antinomy,” “astronomy,” “economy,” “ergonomics,” “gastronomy,” “taxonomy” and others we come across “nómos,” indicating that thanks to these denominations we can easily make distinctions within the world order established by a dominant culture owing to the masculine tradition of thinking. Taking “nómos” as a starting point, in a world where all the rules, measures, and frameworks are determined by men who eliminate women from history and dominate the process of describing and classifying all discoveries, from the stars in the sky down to underground mines, being a woman becomes a synonym for living in exile. After all, Mary’s suffering from “nómos” is as old as the sovereign state.
Sema Kaygusuz
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