"The quality of mercy”
In response to your Editorial Viewpoint "The quality of mercy” (Parsiana, February 7-20, 2025) I would like to say that nowhere is empathy’s generally reliable heuristic (learning through doing things oneself) of placing oneself in another’s shoes more fraught than when a man makes a case for women, even if with only the best of intentions, for he runs the risk of being labeled a "mansplainer” (a man who explains something to a woman in a condescending manner). I’m not. Nor is that my intent. But back to the question at hand. Should women be allowed to become priests? It is, in equal parts saddening, frustrating, and infuriating that the question needs to be posed or an answer provided.
Nowhere is the implicit sexism and male chauvinism of scholars, stewards and other poseurs of Parsiism or Zoroastrianism more on display than when answering the aforesaid question from behind the pious redoubt of convoluted and specious religious cant. Then, these serial snubbers of science do a volte-face and conveniently co-opt it, citing studies "showing” that menstrual blood is "impure” and would profane their fire temples and their sanctum sanctorum. Their all-too-pat conclusion may be summarized more or less thus: "Menstruators must not minister the faith.” (Never mind the niggling fact that men — sanctimonious or not — would never see the light of day if not spawned from women’s wombs, swathed in the "impure” bloody bodily fluids of their mothers and their own meconium (medicalese for excrement).
Eight Iranian women mobedyars trained to carry out the religious tradition
If women want to become priests and tend to fires at fire temples and do whatever else it is that males over millennia have gone to great lengths to selfishly retain as their exclusive preserve and prerogative, women should just do so. Who are men to allow or disallow them? Why is permission of men presupposed? Who or what sublimates men to the status of permission granters? Similarly, who or what desublimates women to the status of permission seekers?
Reason is a poor tool with which to decipher doctrines, incantations, religious rites and rituals. When they stop women from participating in the tending of the fire as co-equals — and they will resist — take with you as many men you can muster who are sympathetic to your just cause. Let the world know in real time what the vaunted good thoughts, words and deeds really amount to — to preacher and proponent — when the chips are down. You will not get anywhere without precipitating a crisis — whether in the kebla or in the courtroom.
But, before taking up cudgels to right the wrong perpetuated for too long upon your sex, more expansive and fundamental questions must be asked and addressed. Do you really want to become co-equal accomplices of men in perpetuating the sanctified madness that is religion? Do you want to be read of in future history books as proliferators of religion and all the unnecessary excess baggage it entails? Have you not learnt anything from the disparate histories of the world’s religions — both long dead and extant — regarding where they all invariably lead?
Will it be worth it, ever?
As it is, we read in the newspapers and see in the media the depredations and the devastations, the ethnic cleansings and the genocides, the wanton killings and the blowing to smithereens of men and women, young and old, of children, of babies in mothers’ wombs in the putative holy land, predicated not in reason but in some holy word in some holy book interpreted by some holy people and taken advantage of by some entirely unholy politicians and leaders. It is hubris (a function of ignorance, the only Socratic evil) to believe that one’s religion — and one’s religion alone -- is peaceful and will remain so in perpetuity. That’s delusion most dangerous.
Hence I for one would rather that Parsi women desirous of priesthood — ordained or not — get together with like-minded members of the community (male, female, and everyone in between) to jointly and co-equally take on the arduous but more ambitious and rewarding task of dismantling the religion altogether and replacing it with some sort of an enlightened and entirely areligious societal model, setting their collective sight on the stars in the twinkling firmament, rather than settling on becoming the distaff side of hapless shepherds leading their dwindling herd of benighted sheep down the dakhmic dead end. ZEND LAKDAVALA
Las Vegas, USA
zocrateszend@yahoo.com
The editors note:
Parsi women in India have been repressed over the centuries. So much so it took them a 100 years to challenge the 1908 sexist judgment of the Bombay High Court in Petit vs Jeejeebhoy that stated that only the children of Parsi males are considered Parsis. Most fire temple trustees are males who are too steeped in tradition to accept women mobedyars in their fire temples and are also fearful of traditionalist backlash and clergy push-back. There would be calls from these parties to boycott the agiary and obstruct the entry of mobeds to these institutions. Even liberal-minded priests and trustees may not have the appetite to right the wrongs perpetrated almost in perpetuity. Iran, North America and other places can, and have made, the change. But reform requires foresight and courage. In India at present that outlook is lacking.