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.

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-- Exemption (Used by permission of the curator)