Secularisation of Religion as the Source of Religious Gender Stereotypes

The Secular–Religious Divide of Feminism

In his approach to secularisation theory, Berger criticises the secular–religious divide. His view is that secularisation theory, according to which modernity necessarily leads to the decline of religion, has proven itself empirically unfounded. ⁵ Modernization does not inevitably lead to secularisation, but rather to pluralism, and pluralism encourages secularisation, because it deprives religion of its certainty and forces the individual to choose between different religious and non-religious options. Berger’s opinion is that we should take two different pluralisms into account. The first refers to the coexistence of different religions, and the second to the coexistence of religious and secular discourse. This coexistence plays out in the minds of individuals as well as in the institutional order. For most believers, the secular–religious divide is not exclusive (either-or), but rather inclusive and fluid (both-and). Berger believes that the ability to handle different discourses is an essential trait of the modern person: the modern individual juggles both secular and religious discourse. ⁶ He states that ‘Those who neglect religion in their analyses of contemporary affairs do so at great peril’. ⁷ The reason for that may be that ‘Religion is not going away; contemporary European societies are characterized by both secularization and sacralization’. ⁸

Attitudes regarding the secular and religious differ within the feminist movement. In a 2015 article, Kristin Aune claims that there are few scientific investigations on feminist groups’ attitudes towards religion. Based on existing studies, she concludes the existence of two opposing viewpoints: (a) ‘feminist secularism’ (feminists who denigrate religion as a tool of oppression that must be controlled and marginalised) and (b) ‘religion-inclusion’ (feminists who promote dialogue and solidarity between religious and non-religious women, challenging the view that secularisation equals emancipation and religion equals oppression). ⁹ Based on her analysis of the representation of religion in the prominent British feminist webzine The F Word, Aune identifies ‘four approaches to religion: feminism in religion: promoting religious feminism; feminism vs. religion: challenging religious oppression (the most prominent approach); supporting religious women; and debating religion and feminism’. ¹⁰ Only the fourth approach presents religion and feminism in a more nuanced way.

Line Nyhagen on the other hand identifies three distinct attitudes towards religion held by secular Western feminists: (a) a hard secular feminist view that is antagonistic to all forms of religion within both the private and public sphere, rejecting religion as unavoidably patriarchal, and advocating for a universal and permanent conflict between religious rights and women’s rights; (b) a mixed hard and soft view, which rejects the presence of religion in the public sphere, but accepts it in the private sphere; and (c) a soft view, which accepts religion in both private and public spheres but takes into account the institutionalised forms of religion that promote gender inequality. ¹¹

Some feminist theoreticians (Sheile Jeffrey, Pragna Patel, Nira Yuval-Davis, Elisabeth Badinter, Rashma Varma) exclude religion, thereby supporting the secular–religious dichotomy and viewing secularism as the best path to securing gender equality. ¹² However, according to Line Nyhagen and Beatrice Halsaa, feminist theory is deeply critical towards dichotomies that are inherently gendered, including the division between the male/public/secular and female/private/religious. Niamh Reilly is of the opinion that static, decontextualised and intolerant approaches to religion must be avoided. Just as it is important to criticise oppression in the name of religion, it is also important to criticise oppression in the name of secularism. ¹³ The secular–religious divide associates irrationality, emotion, bias and false consciousness with religion (as well as with women and femininity in general), while rationality, reason, objectivity and free consciousness are associated with secularism (as well as with men and masculinity). ¹⁴ This kind of dichotomy reinforces the idea that religion is backward, conservative and traditional, as well as the idea that religious women are oppressed, obedient and not at all inclined towards feminism. In contrast, secularism is associated with progress, freedom and modernity, while secular women are seen as free, self-actualizing potential feminists. Such dichotomies are often based on ‘othering’ individuals and groups based on gender, race, class and religion, and pointing out differences between supposedly oppressed women (meaning women of colour, religious women and non-feminists) and supposedly free ones (meaning White, secular, feminists). In addition, such a dichotomy overlooks the participation of women believers in the gender equality movement since its inception, which leads to the exclusion of the contributions of believers to feminist scholarship. ¹⁵ Dubravka Žarkov, based on her analysis on gender, religion and race, concludes that religion is not just gendered but also racialised. Racialization of religions, especially Islam, is not only performed by the state or right-wing political parties, but also left-wing politicians and Western feminists, because they discriminate in favour of Western history and art. ¹⁶

Critique of secular–religious divide aligns with the experiences of female theologians and believers who have actively promoted women’s human rights. They, in Berger’s terms, ‘juggle’ secular and religious gender models and norms. They acknowledge that religion can be used to legitimise gender inequality and discrimination against women, but reject the idea that religion is necessarily patriarchal. ¹⁷ In the spirit of their own religious traditions, feminist theologians set the foundations for women’s human rights and challenge religious restriction of those rights. ¹⁸

Women believers and feminist theologians, however, often find their coupling of secular and religious to be misunderstood or downright rejected both by secular feminist organisations and religious communities. ¹⁹ K. Aune rightfully notes that women believers have been equally neglected by both feminist scholars (who marginalise them) and scholars who advocate for the inclusion of religion in secular discourses (who assume religious freedoms are available to the same extent to both men and women). ²⁰ In her work, Zilka Spahić Šiljak, gender study scholar and Islamic theologian, speaks about a similar process taking place in the Balkans: while feminists from the centre marginalise feminists in the Balkans through neo-colonial approaches and cultural hegemony, secular feminists in the Balkan semi-periphery ignore religious feminism. ²¹ Secular feminists rarely join forces with religious feminists and often are not sensitive to the need for inclusion of religious arguments in the production of feminist knowledge because many of them ‘believe religion to be one of the main causes of gender discrimination and irreconcilable with feminist agendas’. ²² Feminist knowledge production in the Balkan semi-periphery has been artificially divided into secular and religious feminist circles, points out Spahić Šiljak and concludes that religious feminists are excluded and face triple marginalisation: by the state, by secular feminists, as well as by their own religious communities and churches. Rare examples of international feminist organisations acting in BiH are sensitive to the local context. These organisations incorporate religion and religious feminism into their programmes, which was especially important during the war, considering that religion proved itself to be an important coping mechanism for many women who were raped or had other forms of violence inflicted on them as part of the conflict. ²³

Journalist and author Claudia Keller considers this tradition of mutual devaluation between secular feminists and women believers unfortunate, and argues that solidarity and joint activism would help prevent the spread of populism, which promotes Islamophobia under the banner of protection of women’s rights, as well as help break down religious patriarchal structures that deny women their basic rights. According to her, ‘“Strictly secular” feminism that treats religion with scepticism and antagonism is provincial and has no place in a globally connected twenty-first century’. ²⁴ Sociologist Norani Othman also believes that developing a positive relationship between religious, democratic and human rights values within religious communities is the key to solving the problem of religious fundamentalism. ²⁵ Nyhagen and Halsaa’s study, for which they interviewed Christian and Muslim women, points out the possibility of the existence of a common ground that would facilitate the cooperation between women of different religious backgrounds, as well as between religious and secular women. ²⁶ Niamh Reilly emphasises feminist scholarship that brings secular and religious perspectives together. According to her, the works of Rosi Braidotti, Judith Butler, Joan Scott and Saba Mahmood convincingly challenge the epistemological and normative credibility of religious–secular dichotomy as well as the inevitability of the exclusive relationship between mainstream feminism and the secular half of this dichotomy. ²⁷

Scholars who cultivate an inclusive approach to religion do so in two ways. One follows the recent developments in sociology of religion that shift the focus from institutionalised forms of religion (institutionalised faith, membership and participation) to everyday aspects of religion that are mainly lived and practised outside organised religious groups. This is known as the ‘lived religion approach’. ²⁸ Utilising this approach, Nyhagen and Halsaa examined women believers’ views on citizenship, gender equality, women’s rights movements and feminism. They were interested in finding out whether there was common ground for dialogue, cooperation and alliance across the secular–religious divide, and concluded that both sides could find common ground for critical resistance to neo-liberal politics, neo-capitalism, globalisation, climate change and destruction of the environment. ²⁹

Another approach to cultivating inclusion of religion analyses positive examples of women believers contributing to gender egalitarianism within religious communities, and consequently in society overall, through analysis of religious scriptures and traditions. ³⁰ N. Reilly believes that the way to counter the negative influence patriarchal religious interpretations can have on women is to strengthen the position of women believers as active interpreters of their own religions, as equal partners in private and family life, and as equal citizens in public and political life. ³¹ Norani Othman cites female Muslim communities in Indonesia and Malaysia as an example of active participation of women believers in the process of critically reinterpreting religious concepts in an emancipatory way. At the core of their work lies exploration of interpretations of the Qur’an that support universal values of equality, justice and women’s right to a dignified life. Women are thus encouraged to debate those who cite the Qur’an in support of demands for gender inequality in Islam. ³²

Similar examples can be found among female theologians and gender studies scholars in Bosnia and Herzegovina, who started a unique training programme Women Believers and Citizens under the secular CSO TPO Foundation. The goal of the programme is to bridge the secular–religious divide in the process of establishing human rights and gender equality. Another example is Gender Studies programme initiated at the University of Sarajevo that offered the course on gender and religion within the Judaic, Christian and Islamic traditions. ‘The added value of this course was learning how one religion affected interpretive processes of the other two and how secular philosophical knowledge fuelled the anthropology of women and men the Bible and the Qur’an’. ³³

Strict secularism characteristic of a subset of feminists, together with the strict antifeminism of a subset of women believers, continues to impose barriers to finding a common ground for dialogue. Moreover, strict secularism that denies acknowledgement and participative parity for believers within the democratic process supports further stigmatisation, stereotyping and discrimination of women believers. ³⁴ By questioning secular–religious dichotomy, we can make room for dialogue and cooperation. ³⁵ Stepping across binaries enables us to see that neither religion nor secularism guarantees gender equality. ³⁶

The article aims to bring to light secular foundations for the devaluation of women in Christianity and Islam. To develop this argument, we will return to Berger’s hypothesis that the very pluralism that allows different religions, as well as secularism and religion, to coexist, brings into question the certainty of religious discourse. We build upon this thesis with the argument that pluralism brings into question secular discourse itself. This is supported by the research conducted by Joan Scott, who analysed secularisation from the perspective of gender and thus showed that secularisation in and of itself does not lead to gender equality.

The Secular Principles of Islamic and Christian Religious Anthropology

Joan W. Scott challenges the secular–religious dichotomy, and views secularisation and religion not as being eternally in a state of opposition, but as being discourse-dependent. Although she accepts there are differences between secular and religious societies in terms of the extent of opportunities they allow women, she insists that the differences between secular and religious are not always so clear-cut. Secularism is based on a set of polarities (religious/secular, emotion/rationality, woman/man, private/public) that places both women and religion into the private sphere. The distinction between public and private spheres, which is crucial to the secular–religious divide, rests on a view of sexual differences that legitimises the political and social inequality of women. Placing secularism and religion into opposition is what enables gender discrimination to be covered up in secular societies. ³⁷

Using historical examples, Scott shows that secularisation in and of itself did not solve the issue of gender equality. All throughout the history of secularisation, women have not been accepted as politically equal to men. Discussions on the separation of church and state did not take into account the issue of gender. The French revolution subordinated church to the state, and set up a strict divide between church and state (laicité) in 1905. The laws that were brought into effect that year, considered to be one of the landmarks of European secularisation, did not mention gender equality in any of the clauses that regulate division between church and state. Women in France only obtained suffrage rights in 1944. Formal suffrage rights, however, did not completely end the subjugation of women. For example, until the legal reforms that took place between 1965 and 1975, husbands could control their wives’ incomes and forbid them to take up paid work positions. Gender equality in relation to laicité first came into focus in 1987. ³⁸

Scott also calls on the example of Russian revolution to illustrate that secularisation is not equivalent to gender equality. After coming into power, the Bolsheviks introduced constitutional and legal gender equality. However, this legal equality did not translate to the facts of life. ³⁹ All these characteristics can be seen in examples of other socialist societies. As an example, here we take the former Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia.

When the Communist Party in Yugoslavia came to power after World War II, they introduced separation of church and state. Equality between men and women was constitutionally and legally guaranteed in public as well as in family life. However, this did not mean real equality. The question of gender equality was utilised for the purposes of politics and national security. The Party worked on creating the image of a ‘new woman’, ‘socialist woman’. Her identity was created by merging traditional, supposedly natural qualities and roles of women (mothers, wives, homemakers), with emancipatory ones (workers, politicians, revolutionaries). Socialist society promoted so-called patriarchal equality, which was based on a double definition of a woman as a mother and a worker, which led to women assuming a double burden: they had to juggle family and work commitments without an appropriate division of domestic labour. The number of women in political institutions grew or fell depending on interventions by the Party. This was an example of ‘dictated’, or controlled, emancipation that did not bother with systematic overturning of traditional gender relations. ⁴⁰

The significance of ‘nature’, the term communists referred to when they created the identity of the new, socialist woman, is what Scott warns about in her critique of secularism from a gender perspective. She emphasises that secularists removed God, but then put ‘nature’ in his place. Natural differences between the sexes were seen as a legitimate basis for inequality. The laws of ‘nature’, which took the place of divine law, supported the public–private dichotomy that enables secular governance. French revolutionaries, whose 1793 convention prohibited the participation of women in politics, justified themselves with nature, not religion. ⁴¹ Olympe de Gouges, who wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, was guillotined in 1793, and the judge who presided over her case explained the verdict by saying that she wanted to be a statesman and conspired against the law while forgetting the virtues that were appropriate to her sex. ⁴² Scott shows here that religious and secular forces similarly define ‘nature’ as the domain in which normative power is determined. This brings us to our next argument, which is of great importance to the issues of gender equality and gender stereotypes.

According to the Croatian sociologist of religion, Željko Mardešić, the first act of secularisation was conducted internally by the Church itself, when it adopted the Roman legal framework, the definition of itself as a state, and Greek Aristotelian philosophy. ⁴³ The situation in the Muslim world was somewhat different because at the beginning, the caliphate was the centre of spiritual and political power; however, later, as Olivier Roy concluded, ‘a de facto separation between political power’ of sultans and emirs and religious power of the caliph was ‘created and institutionalized [. . .] as early as the end of the first century of the hegira’. ⁴⁴ As we can see, secularisation started to occur rather early, but it became much more influential later during the Ottoman time. In this article, we will limit ourselves to the influence that Aristotle had on both the aforementioned religious traditions, an influence that Mardešić links to the secularisation of religion. Aristotle’s theory of procreation that distinguishes the active male element from the inert, passive female element was crucial for the Christian and Islamic theological anthropology regarding women and gender relations. Out of this theory arose the definition of the ‘nature’ of women, which is used in arguments by both secularists and Christian and Islamic theologians.

The scope of this article does not permit us to detail all of Aristotle’s analyses of the differences between genders, so we will merely survey some points in his theories that are still reflected in modern-day gender stereotypes. In this context, it is important to note Aristotle’s view that the woman is the passive participant in procreation, who contributes to the material attributes of the offspring, while the man’s contribution is active and ensouling. Furthermore, plants, whose only task is to procreate, combine the active and passive forces of birth in the same parental unit. When it comes to animals, especially humans, the individual is concerned with activities apart from procreation; therefore, to stop him from constantly procreating, the active force and passive material element have been separated into two distinct beings who come together only during the act of procreation. The passive element has been separated from the man in order to enable him to take part in activities other than mere procreation. The passive element of birth is encompassed by the woman – a kind of a defective man – who must be at the man’s disposal as one of the key elements of procreation when it becomes necessary. ⁴⁵ Marguerite Deslauries states that though Aristotle feels that the differences between men and women as he defines them are appropriate, he does not base his philosophical views on anatomical and psychological differences, and in that he differs from contemporary socio-biologists who advocate for biological determinism. ⁴⁶

Based on this theory, scholastics defined the nature of women as passive and dependent, while the nature of men was defined as active. Scholastics not only accepted Aristotle’s views on active and passive divisions of procreation in animals, and consequently humans, but they also misinterpreted Aristotle’s statement: ‘The female is, as it were, a mutilated male’. To Thomas Aquinas, it meant ‘Mulier est vir occasionatus’ in the sense that woman was something unintended that came out of a defect. The reasons for this misinterpretation are an unclear translation by Michael Scotus, who translated Aristotle from Arabic rather than Greek, as well as general interpretations of Aristotle’s theory of procreation overall. ⁴⁷ On this foundation grew the divisions of male and female attributes, occupations, interests and spheres of life. Male roles and interests are connected to the public sphere, intellect and active pursuits, while female roles are connected to the private sphere, emotions, passiveness and dependency. The gender stereotypes that are still prevalent today are rooted in these divisions, only they are now presented as models of complementarity rather than subordination. This model still retains the basic dichotomy of male–female attributes, roles and spheres of work that are justified by woman’s ‘nature’. The only difference is that the more recent model nominally values female attributes and roles, but this does not translate into practice. As a result, so-called female professions are paid less, housework and care of family members are not compensated, and so on.

The contemporary official Catholic theological anthropology still advocates for Aristotle’s gender dichotomy and is therefore based on philosophy instead of on theology. The identity of a woman is determined according to her ‘natural’ characteristics instead of the Biblical view of a human being created in ‘God’s image’. According to Gen. 1.26–27, men and women alike are an image of God and are both entrusted with governing the world on equal terms. ⁴⁸ Even when a woman’s identity is based on the theological idea of God’s image and seen as a full embodiment of said image, ⁴⁹ discussions of the role of women in society and churches nevertheless return to arguments regarding female ‘nature’. An example of this is the anthropology of John Paul II, which has been questioned neither by Pope Benedict XVI nor by Pope Frances. Although Pope Frances spoke about complementarity based on different gifts according to 1 Cor. 12 rather than based on gender at the Humanum Conference, ⁵⁰ his other statements show that he shares the views of his predecessors when it comes to gender complementarity. Namely, he continues to speak about the feminine genius and its contributions to family and society: ‘We have not yet understood in depth what the feminine genius can give us, what woman can give to society and also to us’. ⁵¹

The theological anthropology of John Paul II is based on his philosophical postulates in which he combines Thomism (or the classic philosophy of being as he defines it) and phenomenological methods. In simple terms, John Paul II states that man and woman are equally created in God’s image and equally gifted with reason and free will. Given such an interpretation of Gen. 1–2, one might conclude that he advocates for a model based on reciprocal relationships between human beings regardless of gender. However, he does not consider the dignity and role of women merely from the point of view of woman as a person but also from the point of view of female nature and its attributes. ⁵² According to Mary Anne Case, the anthropological model of complementarity was invented by church authorities in the twentieth century and the reason for it was the growing public consciousness regarding human rights, particularly women’s human rights, after World War II. ⁵³ Church authorities who cannot accept the egalitarian model accept complementarity models that appear to be responsive to modern demands for equality. We can see that equality is not actually part of this model from its fundamental principle: equal dignity, different rights. ⁵⁴

John Paul II determines female nature through phenomenological methodology: starting from human experience, he uses induction and reduction to reach metaphysical insights into human nature. Such a methodology points to the significance of the experience that is taken as a starting point. When it comes to women, the principal, indeed only, act that the Pope takes into consideration while pondering the ontological structure of a woman is the act of birth. Freedom, reason and will in women’s case are limited to their knowledge, acceptance and realisation of their dependence on their nature. Analysing the Pope’s teachings shows that to him, phenomenological experience serves as a method of proving an already established assumption of ontological anthropology; that is to say, the Pope reaches his conclusions from the starting point of specific postulates regarding the feminine nature, and he finds these postulates within a specific image, or experience, of womanhood, and then uses induction and reduction to re-inscribe them into the ontological feminine nature. In that way he actually attempts to make Thomistic postulates on female nature, defined according to Aristotle’s principles, understandable to his contemporaries, as well as frame them within a model that, through its praises of the special nature of women – the so-called feminine genius – appears to overcome models that subordinate women but in fact supports them. ⁵⁵

Nature as the basis on which woman’s identity and role are determined also became part of Islamic tradition, even though such a definition is no more present in the Qur’an than it is in the Bible. The Qur’an does not define male and female nature, neither does it ordain obedience to man, but rather to God and the Prophet, and, as Amina Wadud concludes, obedience to their husbands is not what characterises some women as better than others (Qur’an 66:5), nor is it a prerequisite for a woman to become a member of the Muslim community through her oath or bay’a (60:12). ⁵⁶ Islamic tradition has always viewed man and woman as equals who were given the same gifts from God based on the act of creation. The dignity and integrity of a person come from their ownership of a soul (a part of the Divine), reason and free will. However, throughout history, a woman was mainly defined in relation to the man who was the norm in patriarchal tribal societies. Although they are equal before God in terms of their rights and obligations, the roles of men and women were defined based on biological differences. Islamic theological anthropology regarding women was greatly influenced by Judeo-Christian religious tradition and Greek philosophical thought, Aristotle in particular. Muslim scholars accepted the Aristotelian dualistic view of the body and soul, and his definition of the man as the one more inclined towards spirituality and god, while the woman inclined more towards emotion and the material world. Aristotle’s definition of woman as a ‘mutilated’ man, and scholastic interpretations of that definition as meaning that woman is an ‘unfinished’ and ‘incomplete’ man influenced classical as well as present-day Islamic thought. ⁵⁷ The complementarity theory, according to which man and woman complete and supplement each other due to differences that also give primacy to the man as well as the right to control woman, her body and her life, still prevails.

If we define religion as a ‘chain of memory’, and secularisation as an interruption of said memory, as French sociologist Daniele Hervieu-Leger ⁵⁸ does, it is possible to conclude that the acceptance of Aristotelian philosophical anthropology interrupted the memory of Christian and Islamic anthropology that was based on Holy Scriptures. At the core of these two religious traditions, we have a philosophical – therefore secular – rather than religious basis for devaluation of women. By accepting such philosophical postulates and inscribing them into their scriptures, these two religious traditions sacralise the secular justifications for gender inequality. This blending of secular and religious ensures permanence of gender stereotypes. Berger’s pluralism, which secures the secular state as well as the coexistence of secular and religious and different religions, has enabled the comparison of Christian and Islamic traditional anthropologies and the recognition of their common secular basis.

Feminist theologians and gender studies scholars from the Christian and Islamic tradition use Holy Scriptures and other resources to reconstruct the broken chain of memory in order to create a basis for development of egalitarian gender relations. The coexistence of these two religions and exchange of research between their respective feminist scholarship led to the secular principle of ‘nature’ becoming the basis upon which anthropology of women was founded; in other words, Aristotle’s theory that man was active and woman was passive was key to interpretation and understanding of Holy Scriptures in both religious traditions. Through their investigation of Holy Scriptures, feminist theologians build a theological foundation for women’s human rights. They deconstruct religious justifications for gender inequality as a secular discourse that transcends confessional divisions, and advocate for secular–religious dialogue, thereby putting into practice Berger’s thesis on the necessity of the pluralistic paradigm, in which secular and religious have an both-and, not either-or, relationship. An example of such efforts is the project started by TPO Foundation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which resulted in a book Women Believers and Citizens (2009). In this book, Muslim and Christian theologians and gender studies scholars root women’s human rights in the Holy Scriptures of these two religious traditions and advocate for dialogue between secular and religious discourses in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the process of breaking down gender stereotypes that continuously block legally guaranteed gender equality from being realised.

Anti-gender Movement: Defending the Laws of Nature

Deconstruction of the idea of naturally rooted gender roles challenges traditional gender relations and power asymmetry more radically than ever and demands that they be transformed. This results in the kind of fear and resistance seen in the anti-gender movement. Here we wish to emphasise that the movement rejects contesting the view of gender stereotypes as naturally ordained, as well as that it receives support from religious communities, specifically the Catholic Church and certain Muslim institutions. Publicly they back their resistance with more secular, especially ‘scientific’, than religious arguments. ⁵⁹ Their goal is to create a suprareligious coalition and influence secular laws to align with religious norms hidden behind so-called scientific arguments. First let us examine the Christian–Muslim alliance behind the anti-gender movement.

Although the anti-gender movement in its full form emerged only in 2012, ⁶⁰ it has been gradually developing since the Fourth International Conference in Beijing in 1995, supported by various religious, socio-economic and political figures. The conference revealed differences between those who defined gender roles and sexuality as a fixed hierarchical divine and/or natural order, and those who considered them a socio-historical construct and a matter of individual choice. ⁶¹ To Dale O’Leary, Catholic author with great influence in the Vatican, a war against socially constructed gender roles means ‘war against the natural relationships between women and their children, women and men, and between women and their own feminine nature’. ⁶²

Freedom from biological determinism and essentialist identity categories was a nightmare for the Vatican, according to Mary Ann Case. ⁶³ It is, however, necessary to note the ambivalence of Catholic Church authorities, who in some cases distance themselves from biologically deterministic views on gender according to which ‘all the roles and relations of the two sexes are fixed in a single, static pattern’. ⁶⁴ In some other cases, they criticise gender theory for promoting the concept of gender equality through freedom from biological determinism. ⁶⁵ At the initiative of John Paul II, who understood the similarities between conservative Catholics and Muslims on the issue of gender and sexuality, the Vatican launched a coalition of these two groups against gender, which they viewed as an attack on the naturally (and ‘divinely’) ordained gender binary. ⁶⁶

The basis of this coalition was the acceptance and defence of complementary gender models, which stated that a human being can only be either male or female and their complementary gender roles were ordained by Divine intention and nature. The campaigns that started after the Beijing conferences, which aimed to influence United Nations (UN) policy, promoted a complementary model of gender, which promoted the idea of equal dignity of men and women at the expense of their equal rights. ⁶⁷

When it comes to Catholicism, these discourses are rooted in the theology of John Paul II and his aforementioned anthropological postulates on women. John Paul II’s teachings were touted as ‘new feminism’ that was to be a part of Church documents, ⁶⁸ and supported by Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, then Prefect for the Congregation for The Doctrine of Faith, in his Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World. ⁶⁹ Among other things, it is important to note attributes of Vatican’s mobilisation against gender that are of great relevance to the question of secular–religious dichotomy. The anti-gender movement supported by the Catholic Church was closely tied to the new evangelisation, also started by John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The same organisations that were mobilised against ‘gender ideology’, a term coined to encompass all contemporary questions related to sex, gender and sexuality that are problematic for the Catholic Church, also appear as leaders in the project of new evangelisation. These are societies such as Opus Dei, Charismatic Renewal Movement and The Neocatechumenal Way. ⁷⁰ The initiative was an attempt by the Church to influence secular societies, especially in Europe, by insisting on the public role of religion and calling on Catholic laypersons to publicly defend their ideas and mobilise both politically and in the streets. This explains why, even in documents addressed to clerics, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World, there is an emphasis on influencing secular laws and politics in accordance with religious norms. The Holy Seat actually used its status as a country to act together with other political institutions, specifically with members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), who shared some of its concerns regarding the notion of gender. ⁷¹ Consequently, certain countries have seen Catholic-communities-turned-NGOs (nongovernmental organisations) exert pressure with the aim of making laws more compatible with the Catholic worldview, but with public arguments that call not on religion but rather on humanism and universalism, so-called ‘scientific’ arguments. ⁷² An example of this is Gabriele Kuby, German author and activist of exceptional renown and influence in the Vatican as well as the entirety of Eastern Europe. She argues that ‘gender perspective’ does not recognise essential or inherent differences between men and women, even though every cell of the human body is either male or female. Kuby believes that scientific medical research proves that distinct male and female identities are supported by findings regarding their respective brains, hormones, psychology and social behaviours. ⁷³ The Church’s goal in adopting this strategy is, according to sociologist Roman Kuhar, ‘secularizing its discourse to “clericalize” society’. ⁷⁴

Considering Muslims today do not have a central authority that represents them in matters of gender and anti-gender ideology, there is no one institutionalised approach that speaks for all Muslims. Still, complementary gender politics is the reality of Muslim countries. This is mostly reflected in the duality of their legal frameworks, which apply both secular and religious laws. Family, marriage and inheritance are regulated mostly by religious laws in these countries, laws based on non-critical interpretations from 10 or more centuries ago rather than on the modern context and its challenges. ⁷⁵ The OIC, which gathers 57 Muslim countries, has been the only supranational body of its kind since its inception in 1969. OIC documents and commentaries are not legally binding, but they do affect gender policies in member countries. In his analysis of resistance to the rights of sexual and gender minorities, Robert C. Blitt found that the OIC states its priority is to protect the ‘Islamic family’ and acknowledge cultural and social specificities. ⁷⁶ In other words, there is an insistence on cultural relativism, which means that individual rights may be denied under the excuse of preserving the ‘Islamic family’. Some Muslim countries have reservations regarding certain CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) items precisely because they do not wish to accept change to cultural and traditional practices that discriminate against women. Alternatives to such gender policies are presented by Muslim authors ⁷⁷ who strive to offer new interpretations of Islamic sources through the lens of gender egalitarianism, but their voices are still a minority compared to institutionalised patriarchy.