Views and Values
Religion - Four Paradigmatic Views
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kavous Ardalan
Any explanation of “religion” is based on a worldview. The premise of this paper is that any worldview can be associated with one of the four broad paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. This paper takes the case of “religion” and discusses it from the four different viewpoints. It emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the phenomenon from their certain paradigmatic viewpoint; and together they provide a more balanced and a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. In this paper, Part I discusses the four paradigms, and Part II discusses four paradigmatic views of religion.
Jewish and Islamic Medieval Interpretations of the Masculine Grammatical Gender and Its Inclusive Value View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session María Ángeles Gallego
Both Hebrew and Arabic, the sacred languages of Judaism and Islam respectively, have specific grammatical markers for masculine and feminine. The masculine, however, is used as well in a generic sense as inclusive of both masculine and feminine. In their interpretation of their sacred texts, medieval Jewish and Muslim grammarians and exegetes, felt the need to account for the generic use of the masculine and generally justified it as a reflection of the superiority of men over women. Within the literalist reading of the sacred text that characterizes Jewish Karaite scholars, however, a more complex interpretation was advanced. In an original approach to this issue that will be examined in this study, Abu l-Faraj Harun ibn al-Faraj, active in Jerusalem in the 11th century C.E., contemplated the exemption of women from the fulfillment of certain obligations when the divine injunction was delivered with masculine grammatical markers unless contextual elements indicated a generic meaning. The views of Abu l-Faraj Harun are analysed within the general framework of philosophical and grammatical theories of gender among Muslim and Jewish contemporary scholars.
