Believing without chains

by Renato Butera

Rivka and Malka, Nisha, Petrunya. These are the names of women of our time. They come from different cultures and religions and share a strong sense of freedom, which has been conditioned by belonging to a specific religious tradition experienced, or endured, at the edge of rigid and stifling observance. They do not want to defame the religion they are tied to; instead, their aim is to express a firm desire for freedom supported by the necessity and urgency of respect for their condition as women. To tell their stories will help us grasp elements that lend themselves to a reflection which, while respecting the traditions of the distinct “religions of the book”, brings humanity back to its most original quality: the likeness to God. This understanding cannot avoid religiosity, but neither can it ignore the demands of our time.

Rivka and Malka are sisters, and the protagonists of Kadosh (Amos Gitai, 1999). The older is married to a rabbi who practices Orthodox Judaism. The couple want a child, but one is not forthcoming. Rivka is falsely accused of sterility. Beyond the harm, she must endure the humiliation of repudiation. Malka is promised in marriage to a man chosen by the community whom she does not love because he is violent. Instead, she is attracted to a young musician who reciprocates her feelings. Rivka and Malka, each in her own way, suffer the violence of the community which, in the name of orthodoxy, forces them to submit to fundamentalist rules that are often “disrespectful” of those traces of freedom and dignity granted by the Creator. Their fates unfold differently, ranging from tragic resignation to rebellious abandonment.

Fundamentalism and submission (Islam) are also at the center of What Will People Say (Iram Haq, 2017). These two “religious values” appear even more jarring and distant from the Western and indifferent Norway. Nisha was born and lives here with her Pakistani family, while navigating expedients that allow her to reassure her parents and avoid isolation from friends. However, the rules require her to marry a man she does not know. The attempt to bring her back to submissive submission proves painful and futile. She is spared a tragic ending like that of other Pakistani girls in the West (Saman Abbas, or Hina Saleem). Nisha is “lucky” to have a tormented but understanding father who has found a balance between the reality of the environment where they live and the rules of tradition (the sharia), which lay a thousand miles geographically, culturally, and temporally away.

The cultural and religious context of Petrunya’s story, who is the protagonist of God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya (Teona Mitevska, 2019), is that of the Christian Orthodox Macedonia. Petrunya is thirty-two years old, a graduate and unemployed; however, she is enterprising and determined to make something of herself in a society dominated by complete male control. Even the rules of a traditional festival in her village, which is a mix of religiosity and superstition, exclude her from a challenge reserved exclusively for men. The impulsive act she commits, which is to jump to catch a small cross thrown into the icy river waters, is considered offensive and irreverent by the narrow-mindedness of the community. This incident puts her in the absurd situation of being arrested for the seriousness of the “infraction”. Beyond submission, the rules generate discrimination.

Catholic Christianity also has its protagonist in Hypatia. She is the victim of a fundamentalism that in antiquity produced atrocities that must be remembered to prevent those tragic errors from being repeated. Hypatia, whose story is told in Agora (Alejandro Amenábar, 2009), is the victim-martyr of a fundamentalist religiosity that has lost the meaning of “Christian” charity and mercy.

The films reviewed here question us about the condition of women in the relationship between religion and contemporaneity. It must be acknowledged that the “religions of the book” in the name of faith, have often reduced the aspirations, desires, and freedom of women to the point of submitting them to traditions where machismo has excessively prevailed. The set of precepts and beliefs constitute the religion to which one is “bound”. However, when the rules lose their spirit and become unbearable burdens that limit and weigh life down, religion can only generate unhappiness, frustration, and inhumanity. From the Gospel of Luke (11:46), “Woe to you lawyers also! for you load men with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers”. Often, those burdens translate into unreasonable and excessive subordination.