Religious Attitudes toward the Disabled (2015)

One can readily find evidence of the low regard that various religions have for the disabled. Like religious misogyny (or "hatred of women": see Kramer & Moore, 2002), prejudicial practices against the disabled often have doctrinal justification. In this essay I (a) cite scriptural sources for these attitudes, (b) describe some of the discriminatory behaviors associated with them, and (c) sample some of the apologetics used to deal with obvious conflicts generated by purportedly kind and merciful belief systems that not only tolerate, but actually encourage, exclusionary actions. I realize, of course, that the sources that I have searched often contain different messages, some of which contradict the messages I highlight. My concern is not so much the inconsistency between the various scriptures, but the ability of believers to find a scriptural rationalization for practically any behavior.

Jewish attitudes toward the disabled rely on strict biblical injunctions against the participation of the physically handicapped in bringing sacrifice: "none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles" (Leviticus 21: 17-20).[1] Or consider Exodus 4:11: "Who gives man speech? Who makes him dumb or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?" The latter has served as the scriptural basis of the main monotheistic religions' belief in a divine source for all afflictions.[2] According to Tzvi Marx (2002), Halachic literature (the body of Jewish religious laws) "reveals instances of apparent indifference, or even callousness, with respect to the disabled: laws and liturgical passages that appear to evince a dismissive, even derisive attitude toward individuals with disabilities" (p. 1). Marx saw in this attitude "an internal ambivalence," a "dissonance within the halakhic culture itself," in view of the disabilities of major figures in Jewish thought: "Isaac, who is blind, Jacob, who limps; the initially childless matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel, and the speech-disabled Moses—are no less esteemed because of disability" (p. 2).

In his highly influential Guide for the Perplexed, the 12th-century Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides offered an apologia for the harsh strictures of the Pentateuch: A priest who had a blemish was not allowed to officiate; and not only those who had a blemish were excluded from the service, but also ... those that had an abnormal appearance; for the multitude does not estimate man by his true form but by the perfection of his bodily limbs and the beauty of his garments, and the temple was to be held in great reverence by all. (1919/1194, p. 357)
The Hindu doctrine of Samsara connects individual differences to actions performed in a past life. Mental and physical suffering "is thought to be part of the unfolding of karma and is the consequence of past inappropriate action (mental, verbal or physical) that occurred in either one's current life or in a past life" (Whitman, 2007). Hindu mythology often portrays people with disabilities negatively, such as the blind king Dritarashtra and the lame Shakuni, both of whom appear as cruel and evil. And Lord Vishnu declared that disabled people have no place in Heaven and refused to wed Lakshmi's disfigured sister, arranging her to marry a tree (World Bank, 2007).

All of this received wisdom inevitably influences the behavior of believers toward the disabled. Before 1928, handicapped individuals in India could not inherit property. Yet the abolishment of legal discrimination (Nagpal, 1983) has not changed social norms. In a 2007 World Bank survey in India, around half of the respondents believed that "disability was always or almost always a curse of God." The survey also showed that people with disabilities attended around half of social and religious functions, and often found themselves discouraged from attending marriages. The behavior of clergy provides another indication of intolerance of disabled individuals: According to Punbit (2013), "extremist Hindu temples have started a drive to deny entry to disabled people."

In his defense of belief in the karmic origin of disabilities, professor of comparative religion Arvind Sharma relied upon what Lawrence Kohlberg characterized as the lowest level of moral reasoning (one typical of young children): that one's behavior should be dictated by the need to avoid punishment (Kohlberg, Levine, & Hewer, 1984). According to Sharma, a belief in karma "commends warm-hearted concern to minimize the [disabled] person's problems, even though caused by his or her own actions in the past. Otherwise, according to that same law of karma, when we find ourselves similarly disadvantaged, we will ourselves be so treated, and will have deserved such treatment by our own callousness" (Sharma, 1999).

An identical account appears in Buddhism:
The blind of this world bear a heavy burden for past failure to tell the way clearly to travelers. Some people's mouths are very misshapen. They blew out lamps on the Buddhas' altars. To be deaf and mute is a dreary existence. Reward appropriate for scolding one's parents. How do people get to be hunchbacks? They berated and laughed at those bowing to Buddhas" (Buddhist Text Translation Society, n.d.).
Having been exposed to such texts, many Buddhists have a negative attitude toward the disabled. According to one survey of Japanese Buddhists, "68% of people with disability say they have experienced discrimination," and "the vast majority of people without disability feel that individuals who have a disability are treated like second-class citizens" (Stevens, 2013, p. 32). Sallie B. King reached a similar conclusion:

http://infidels.org/library/modern/michael_moore/disabled.html


Plenty more to read on the link