Al Qaeda, ISKCON, and Gender Roles

That other group dedicated to the downfall of materialistic globalized civilization is also facing significant internal debate over traditional gender roles. From CNN comes the story: "Al Qaeda faces gender debate".

Muslim extremist women are challenging al Qaeda's refusal to include -- or at least acknowledge -- women in its ranks, in an emotional debate that gives rare insight into the gender conflicts lurking beneath one of the strictest strains of Islam.

It's interesting to note how a group that is arguably the quintessence of the agrarian backlash to post-industrial global society is also being pulled kicking and screaming into post-modernity.

Al-Zawahiri's remarks show the fine line al Qaeda walks in terms of public relations. In a modern Arab world where women work even in some conservative countries, al Qaeda's attitude could hurt its efforts to win over the public at large. On the other hand, noted SITE director Katz, al-Zawahiri has to consider that many al Qaeda supporters, such as the Taliban, do not believe women should play a military role in jihad.

Hmmm... perhaps they should consider annotations? Then again, that might be singularly divisive, since the two camps have practically diametrically opposed views.

Al-Zawahiri's question-and-answer campaign is one sign of al Qaeda's sophistication in using the Web to keep in touch with its popular base, even while its leaders remain in hiding. However, the Internet has also given those disenfranchised by al Qaeda -- in this case, women -- a voice they never had before.

Go the web and people who have figured out how it alters the game! ISKCON has the venerable D.A.S.I (Devotees Associating with Spiritual Intent) blog - which is not to be confused with the new (Vaisnava) Dasi blog, which is for the more militantly activist wing. The older, more established D.A.S.I blog is focused on individual spiritual practice, with a mission that includes focusing on developing members' Krishna consciousness and deepening their relationships, and a longer term focus of "Personal…Local…Global". The new Dasi blog, on the other hand, is more political in nature, focuses on day-to-day current events, and calls members to political action, including lobbying the individual members of the GBC (their email addresses are helpfully listed on the front page). Recent pronouncements coming from the GBC do give the impression that the body is responsive to this form of influence.

Interestingly I stumbled across this in my RSS-feeds today:

Bureaucracies tend to define their church’s mission as a form of liberalism for another reason: They are easily taken over by politically organized groups, both because such people tend to join them to advance their cause and because an organized group can easily be given a place in the process. Liberals are politically more active and better organized, in part because traditional believers are working on their sermons or running soup kitchens or raising their children or helping their neighbors.

- Reorganizing Religion - Why the Church Bureaucracies Have to Go

I'm not saying that this is the case in ISKCON, but if it were, the new Dasi blog deliberately or instinctively (woman's intuition?) homes in on that leverage point.

And if some Vaisnavis find even this level of political activism still too moderate for their taste, there's always that other revolutionary organization to go to, to take it to the next level:

Women bent on becoming militants have at least one place to turn to. A niche magazine called "al-Khansaa" -- named for a female poet in pre-Islamic Arabia who wrote lamentations for two brothers killed in battle -- has popped up online. The magazine is published by a group that calls itself the "women's information office in the Arab peninsula," and its contents include articles on women's terrorist training camps, according to SITE.

More power to the sisters!

(And no, I am not calling politically active women in ISKCON "terrorists", just to be clear on that point.)