There can be no truly frank and forthright discussion about domestic violence in Islamic societies without acknowledging the role of Qur’an 4:34:
“Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them.”
However the apologists try to spin it, the bottom line is that Allah says you can hit your wife. And so often, Muslim men do just that. “Wife beaten to death for ‘disobedience,” by Mohammed Elsidafy for Emirates Business 24-7, February 1:
A woman was beaten by her husband after she refused to resume breastfeeding her baby, Dubai Criminal Court heard yesterday.
The defendant, MN, a 26-year-old Pakistani tailor, again ordered the woman, AF, to feed her baby, but she refused once more, put the baby on the bed and went onto the roof of their house.
There, she removed her headscarf, which annoyed her conservative Muslim husband. He then allegedlly slapped her and brought her back to her room.
When she left the room again and went back up to the roof, he allegedly hit her several times with a plastic pipe, and she fell to the ground. He lifted his wife up and lay her on the bed, but when her condition deteriorated, he took her to hospital. She passed away after a few days due to complications from an injury to her head.
The prosecution accused the husband, who has been jailed since April pending the case, of inflicting injuries on his wife that led to her death.
The defendant attended yesterday’s session and appeared distracted. He denied the charge when questioned by the court.
According to testimony by Ali Mohammed, an anesthetisation consultant at Khalifa Hospital in Ajman, nurses consulted him on the victim’s condition, telling him her husband had brought her in claiming she had fallen from a ladder.
Mohammed had her moved to the emergency ward, where it appeared on examination that she had been bruised in various places. Suspecting a criminal act, he alerted his superior and called the police.
The victim was operated upon a few days later. The forensic report showed the injuries on AF’s body were a result of being hit with a solid object and death occured due to an injury to the head….