discomfort of feminine descriptions of the monotheistic God
Sheikh writes that in her view, the discomfort of feminine descriptions of the monotheistic God might partly be explained by the fact that patriarchy has rendered make imagery normative and rendered feminine imagery for the divine as unthinkable or dissonant. She says so because Islam is no exception when it comes to patriarchy histories. She explains that Muslims have a long account of gendered hierarchies, divine masculine associations that are implicit, and authority of the male. Patriarchy refers to a government’s or society’s government where the male is the father, or eldest son heads the family. This means that for a long time, the Muslim religion has lived in a male-dominated context, especially when it comes to power, leadership, and authority (Shaikh). Therefore, they have learned to attribute leadership to a masculine figure. It is something that has been there in the religion, and it would, thus, be challenging to change into something else different since the society has made it appear normal, and they have adapted to it.
Christian, Muslim, and Jewish feminists are sensitive to specific issues according to our readings. The majority of Jewish feminists criticize the images of God presented in the traditional Jewish works that are hierarchical. The critic takes the first track of having a program that replaces God’s masculine pronouns with feminine or gender-neutral pronouns. This is done by totally avoiding to use any personal pronouns to refer to God, addressing God as she or he, as s/she, or by alternating she as well as he in various paragraphs. The second strategy involves looking for metaphors that describe God as being feminine. Amongst the most famous such metaphor is one that refers to God as the source of life, which implies that God gave birth to the world (Gillman).
Some metaphors do not emphasize male or female gender categories. Such terms are ruler, monarch, and sovereign. These three terms might be considered to be the most effective to describe the aspect of God because they have little adverse history attached to them (Clarkson, p. 46). Another non-gender specific word used to describe God is Yahweh (Clarkson, p. 47). Sovereign is also associated with no particular gender. It means the one who has the authority and is in power is supreme and does not specify any gender (Clarkson p. 48).
Some cons accompany the use of these terms. When they are used, they are not biased on any of the genders by maybe making one gender feel more inferior than the other like male terms do. When masculine gendered terms are used for God, they emphasize on the power of God and seems to uphold the expectation of the society that men should be dominant, and rulers of the world (Clarkson p. 46). Such notions make women feel despised, and they can quickly reduce their self- esteem. Also, when such words are in use, both genders feel represented, and there is no chance for one to feel discriminated against the other. They help us look at and view God in a dimension that does not limit him to any gender. Instead, we see him from a universal perspective.
Some disadvantages are associated with these words. They make us question the realness of God and his existence since we expect, as a supreme being, he should have a gender identity. We also question some of his words, which will appear contradictory if we are to describe him as neither male or female. For example, in Genesis, when he said let us make a man like us would be contradictory because it would mean the man made never had a gender identity if we describe God as being neither as well. T