# Exemption

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Bahíyyih Nakhjavání, Exemption, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Exemption
> 
> Bahíyyih Nakhjavání
> 
> published in Bahá'í Studies Review3:1
> 
> London: Association for Bahá'í Studies English-Speaking Europe, 1993
> 
> An exemption implies a privilege. An exemption suggests a release from
> a normally unpleasant and burdensome task. This is the underlying assumption
> about an exemption: it is a privilege that absolves one of an onerous duty.
> 
> We all like privileges. Children love being exempted from homework,
> for instance. When sick or enfeebled by prolonged suffering, it is a relief
> to know that someone somewhere understands, that society exempts one from
> work without loss of wages, that once exempted by a doctor's certificate,
> one can receive medical insurance and social security. It is generally
> a relief to be granted exemption from military service and always a pleasure
> when one is exempted from paying taxes. In all cases the privilege implied
> by exemption presupposes an advantage has been gained, an alternative has
> been provided.
> 
> We like our societies to allow that special conditions and mitigating
> circumstances can exist which release people from being expected to perform
> a social duty. We respect laws that permit for exemptions, that protect
> the individual from the anonymity of the group. Exemptions affirm personal
> rights; they protect us from the generalization and abuse of the law.
> 
> Of course, an exemption can be abused too. It not only permits choice
> but sets up distinctions between people: this one can and that one can't.
> And whatever creates distinctions carries the risk of prejudices, of invented
> differences which do not exist. It not only offers privileges but sets
> up assumptions about them: if I exempt you there must be good reason for
> you to need that exemption. And the reasons are only good if desired and
> not imposed. It not only admits special circumstances but can lead to a
> manipulation of them. And as vital as an exemption is in the right circumstances,
> and for the right reasons, so can it be deadly in the wrong ones.
> 
> In order for an exemption to be a true privilege, the recipient has
> to feel the privilege. Otherwise, the exemption risks becoming something
> else. It risks becoming a prohibition. And the history of mankind is littered
> with exemptions that have gradually been transformed into prohibitions
> because privilege has been used against groups of people as well as being
> granted to them. For an exemption to function properly as a privilege and
> not as a prohibition society has to share a common understanding and respect
> about what issues are burdensome, onerous and unpleasant and for whom they
> might be particularly arduous. We have to agree about what circumstances
> would be special or difficult, and for whom they would be hard or heavy
> to endure. Above all, we can't exempt people from doing something they
> want to do. We can't exempt people from privileges. To call it a privilege
> when you offer someone the possibility of exemption from a privilege is
> to be sarcastic.
> 
> When I read in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas that women are exempted from
> going on pilgrimage, I know Bahá'u'lláh is not being sarcastic.
> So I do not understand.
> 
> Pilgrimage in most religious traditions has accrued the significance
> of privilege for the pilgrim, and in some cases, even for those who meet
> the pilgrim. This is not a material or physical privilege, but a spiritual
> one. Regardless of the fact that there have been pilgrims who have abused
> this tradition in the past, who have used it to take advantage of the gullible,
> to flaunt it as a personal achievement, to assume it has endowed them with
> superiority, the tradition has survived. Indeed, the muddle of motives
> and the confusion between the outer journey with the inner arrival has
> inspired some of the greatest works of literature in the past. To have
> attained pilgrimage has been a sign of personal blessing, and to desire
> it is often the goal of spiritual life, a symbol of re-dedication. The
> hard road of pilgrimage has often been used as an atonement, and even the
> most cynical pilgrim secretly anticipates rewards awaiting him at the threshold
> of his heart's desire. In the Bahá'í Faith, this tradition
> remains intact, with one remarkable distinction: women are "exempted" from
> it.
> 
> That single exemption calls a great deal into question: about the tradition
> itself, about the past and future, about women, and about the use of words.
> How can one be "exempted" from pilgrimage? Certainly one can be
> given a choice: to go or not to go. Certainly one can be absolved
> of the obligation. But how can one be "exempted" from a privilege?
> As long as pilgrimage is the subject under discussion and "exempted"
> is the verb, I don't understand.
> 
> Women in the twentieth century, in the West, with access to air travel,
> medical services, a normal body and a modest independence, may wonder about
> being singled out and chosen for this dubious distinction. They may wonder
> how they are supposed to value an exemption which implies a set of circumstances
> and conditions that it were better to change rather than avoid. They may
> wonder whether women may not be led to use this exemption for reasons other
> than being female and whether men might not be led to dissuade women from
> taking pilgrimage on the grounds that it is not after all essential. They
> may wonder why they have a privilege by virtue of their sex which they
> may not need, while others, who are not women, but who may need the exemption
> on grounds of health or economics, do not have it. Above all, they may
> wonder why they are being relieved of doing something which according to
> centuries of tradition and inference in the Bahá'í writings,
> carries implications of blessing for the entire human race. They may wonder
> about the slippage that can so easily take place between exemptions and
> prohibitions. And most of all, they will remember, with a little sinking
> of the heart, a little stagger of hope, that this slippage generally happens
> when a spiritual authority makes special distinctions; that this slippage
> generally happens when an exemption is provided by religion that sets a
> certain group apart, when God kindly tries to arrange human affairs in
> such a manner that would alleviate burdens from certain members of society,
> namely women. What generally happens is that a slippage occurs, a slow,
> invisible slippage as men pervert the exemption into a prohibition. This
> is no accusation, no condemnation. Six thousand years of habit is hard
> to break. It's in the genes, leave alone in the myriad subtle threads of
> association and expectation that hold societies together. It can't be helped,
> but it mustn't be ignored. To ignore is to re-write history and avoid truth.
> 
> Of course there have always been ways of re-writing history. There have
> always been ways of re-defining the exemption from privilege in
> terms of privilege in order not to think about the darker side of
> human nature. It is not difficult. The Catholic church did it for centuries.
> Fascist societies have justified all kinds of atrocities this way. Totalitarianism
> called it "re-education".
> 
> All that is required is a sleight of mind:
> 
> if we can conveniently ignore recent research in science which
> shows how women are better equipped, physically, than men are to endure
> sustained strains and strength-sapping 'rigours' as must be met in long
> voyages and can forget the evidence of all those remarkable women travellers
> since the last century who have broken every record of endurance;
> 
> if we can forget the stamina of all those women in the world
> who undergo 'rigours' in the field and in the home far more unrewarding
> and arduous than anything which can be anticipated in travel towards the
> heart's eternal home;
> 
> if, too, we can forget that women suffer no biological defects
> that would render them any less capable of travel than men as long as they
> have been permitted, like men, to run and jump and develop their natural
> strengths instead of pining and reclining and feeding themselves and starving
> themselves and squeezing themselves into corsets, and stuffing their minds
> with soap operas, and in short, turning themselves into invalids;
> 
> and if we can ensure that women's minds, which have been allowed
> to stretch with their bodies, can be confined once more in that primitive
> and primordial darkness, so wonderfully cultivated by centuries of patriarchal
> fear, that taught them to stay at home and always practice thrift, that
> ensured they never roam abroad or entertain strangers without risk to their
> chastity, that evoked a world of rapists round every corner;
> 
> and finally, if we imagine that Bahá'í pilgrimage
> will one day ripen out of its original purity and rot into decadence, will
> become a test of endurance, apparently more 'rigorous' for women than for
> men, and that the House of Justice itself will not be able to prevent the
> vulgarity and the materialism and the crass superstition and the sheer
> tawdriness that results from millions of people's acts of homage, year
> after year after year;
> 
> then yes, women may prefer to visit the Shrines by means of virtual
> reality, and yes, the exemption from the physical journey would then become
> a privilege.
> 
> But this is surely what we mean by slippage. It is the result of the
> mind's busy work of justification. When we start looking for meanings,
> when we start inferring and assuming and discovering imagined implications
> we will come up with horrors. Unless the context of society is already
> strongly opposed to such a slippage, unless all the other laws and regulations
> make it impossible for this abuse to take place, unless God Himself protects
> women from having exemptions turned against them, these horrors will happen
> again and again.
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views12298 views since posted 1998; last edit 2017-02-14 17:05 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../nakhjavani_exemption;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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> — *Exemption (Used by permission of the curator)*