Re: Taliban hatred for women?

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Spector

the "Witchcraze" thesis is that it was much more than just the burning of
some heretics. It involved the massive expropriation--stealing--of property
from many, many women, and may have been an important part of the primitive
accumulation of capital at the beginnings of capitalism. So in that sense,
there is some particular relevance to capitalism as opposed to a more
general form of sexist or anti-heretical oppression.

***

Indirectly at first. Because the governments in Europe refused to fund the
inquisition (the secular arm only carried out the execution, while the
church organized surveillance, arrests, and ritual confessions), the church
was forced to resort to confiscatory policy to pay for and expand the
machinery of mass murder. Over time, the need for more money drove expansion
of the scope of persecution. During the rise of capitalism, it was almost
certain that wealth accumulated during the inquisition from these sources
found its way into the hands of the various bourgeoisie. More than this, the
rise of capitalism was associated with an intensification of the
inquisition, and the wealth link here is even greater. My point concerned
the origins of the persecution of women by the church, which I see as more
explicable on the basis cultural-ideological imperative rather than material
interests associated with capitalism. 

Andrew Austin