In Iran last week a young woman was beaten to death by the country’s “morality police”. 22 year-old Mahsa Amini was deemed to be in violation of Iran’s restrictions on women’s dress. The police denied responsibility for Amini’s death, saying that she died of a heart attack. Her family says that she had no health difficulties prior to the incident. Hours before her death, the police contacted Amini’s family to inform them that she had been apprehended. They said that she would be released after a “re-education session.” Mahsa and her family were visiting Tehran from another part of the country.
A newspaper with a cover picture of Mahsa Amini, is seen in Tehran, Iran September 18, 2022.
Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
How do you react to stories like this? Some people react with an anti-Islam bias, inappropriately explaining the death by indicting the whole of a religion. There is an ignorance in this, a failure to consider the rich history, spirituality, and faith of Islam. Some people indict not only Islam but all religion. This is a faulty explanation as well. It fails to take into account that some of the best and highest of humanity has come from religious faith. Concepts like human rights, self-sacrificial love, and the consideration of others before self are not exclusive to religion, but there is no doubt that they often arise from religious worldviews. Supposed non-religion, atheism or secularism has also contributed greatly to human flourishing and love, but non-religious worldviews have proven as adept as religious fundamentalism at terror, imposition of belief, mass murder, genocide, and all other kinds of dehumanization.
When I hear of stories like that of Mahsa Amini I am reminded of the dangers of fundamentalism of all stripes. There is Islamic fundamentalism, there is Christian fundamentalism, there is so-called secular fundamentalism. They are all dangerous. Fundamentalism is a distortion of worldview, faith, or belief that leads away from healthy persuasion to the imposition of religion or its beliefs. In our culture currently, it is quite easy to see right wing fundamentalism and left wing fundamentalism. Whenever you hear people who think differently described as “bad people” or people who think just like the speaker described as “good” that’s a red flag.
In Acts chapter 8, as the Christian church is in the early days of formation after Pentecost, there is an astounding story that could direct the ethos of Christian faith and mission more than it has. The followers of Jesus have been scattered. Saul, who has not yet become Paul by way of his own conversion, is leading a violent persecution. One of the followers of Jesus, a man named Philip is visited by an angel, by the Spirit of God, to go to a particular road that runs through the desert en route to Gaza. When Philip arrives at the place he felt directed towards he finds a eunuch from Ethiopia, an official of the Ethiopian Queen. Note that pretty much everything about this person says that they are outside of Jewish and Christian faith. They do not fit expected societal norms of sexuality. They do not fit racial norms of the Jewish society. As Philip sees the chariot travelling with the eunuch, the Spirit says, “Go. Join the chariot.” Philip is now running towards an outsider. Such is the expansiveness and extravagance of God’s love. As he catches up to the chariot, it becomes evident that the eunuch is reading scripture. What ensues is a conversation about the text from Isaiah, and about Jesus. The eunuch replies positively to Philip’s explanation of the scripture in light of Jesus, and then, noticing some water by the road, asks to be baptized. Philip obliges and soon after the eunuch is gone. The text tells it as if it was a kind of miraculous disappearance. Philip, by the work of the Holy Spirit, has zero chance to give lessons on sexuality or morality in general. In the Spirit’s work here there are no classes before baptism, no obligations to make to an institution, no forms to sign. There is no imposition of morality at all, just the joining of humanity.
Last weekend Jennifer and I watched a devastating French movie called “Happening (L’Evenement")”. It is about a young woman in France when abortion was still strictly illegal. The movie sparsely and vividly tells the story of what she goes through in trying to get an abortion. There is no emphasis on the religious rationale for the laws in France at the time, simply a view of what it would be like to be a young woman in that circumstance in that place at that time.
Why do fundamentalists think that it is perfectly acceptable to impose their moral understanding on other people? Would they be okay if this was done to them by a strict religious view that they did not share?
I note the story of the Ethiopian eunuch because if you have been raised in a system in which God was co-opted to support the imposition of a moral grid then it can be hard to see that true Christian faith can be so much better than that. Hopeful Christian faith is about joining, not judging. How are we compelled to see the humanity of Mahsa Amini, not treat her like a problem to be solved? How are we to drop all of our categories and assumptions to be joined in humanity with the unnamed Ethiopian eunuch? This is the faith that is compelling to me, and it is the faith much more present in scripture than the religion of rigid lines that so many have known.
Jesus broke boundaries, he did not impose them. He particularly broke boundaries around how religion can treat and dehumanize women. We see this in the story of the woman at the well, and the woman treated as an object by the religious leaders after supposedly being “caught in the act” of adultery. Jesus does not impose moralism or religion upon anyone. He joins us, we join Him, and by His spirit we can join and see the humanity of others rather than judge and criminalize and condemn.
Over and over again, in religious history, when an expression of faith becomes distorted by fundamentalism, outsiders are castigated (note the anti-immigrant sentiment in many countries claiming to be “Christian”) and control is imposed over women’s bodies. If it weren’t so terrible it would be almost comical to note the repeated playbook. Here we go again.
We can see this in a terrible and extreme example like the death of Mahsa Amini. For those of us who are Christians we are better to consider how we have seen this in our own faith, our own upbringing. Do what you can to call this out, and determine, as much as you can, to be freed from the idea that this kind of imposition marks real faith. It is a sign, not of faith, but of fear, distortion, and ignorance. It is ugly and morally pathetic.
May God bless and strengthen the countless people who have been hurt and held down by the ignorance of others. Hopeful faith is so much better than that.