Is This the First Feminist Religion? : An Exploration of the Similarities between the Principles of the Bahá'í Faith and the Ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft and Luce Irigaray, through the Analysis of Concepts of Justice and Subjectivity

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This project addresses the problem of the mutual prejudice between religion and feminism. The author shows, using Christianity as an example, how feminists have considered religion to be oppressive due to distortions of the intention of the divine message through institutionalization and canonization. The author demonstrates why the principle of gender equality is fundamental to the Bahá’í Faith. This principle is in danger of being dismissed or underestimated. The author compares the principles from the 19th-century scriptures of the Bahá’í Faith with the feminist concepts in the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft and Luce Irigaray. The author uses this comparison to argue for the need to exchange ideas between co-emerging discourses of feminism and the Bahá’í Faith, particularly as they converge in the field of ethics on topics of justice and subjectivity.