Robert Spencer: Deception and Denial Are Not Reform

At Atlas Shrugs I explain the difference between the all too common deception and denial and the all too rare genuine Islamic reform:

Deception and denial are not reform, and yet Muslim spokesmen in the West constantly confuse these things with one another, and expect non-Muslims not to notice.

The Change This campaign is an initiative of a Muslim women's charity in Scotland that claims that Muslim men who think that the Koran allows them to beat their wives are "manipulating" the real teachings of Islam, which they think forbids wife-beating.

I am all for a campaign to persuade Muslim men not to beat their wives. But here we come up to the perennial problem: denying that the texts of the Koran and Hadith regarding wife-beating say what they clearly say is not reform; it is just deception. It may be self-deception, but it is deception nonetheless. It may play well with non-Muslims who don't know what those texts say, but it won't convince any wife-beating Muslim husband to stop beating his wife: he knows, in the words of one Muslim wife-beater, that "the Koran says it's okay."

The Koran’s infamous wife-beating verse goes like this:

Men are the managers of the affairs of women for that God has preferred in bounty one of them over another, and for that they have expended of their property. Righteous women are therefore obedient, guarding the secret for God's guarding. And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them. If they then obey you, look not for any way against them; God is All-high, All-great. (Koran 4:34)

This is, of course, an extremely controversial verse, so it is worth noting how several translators render the key part of this verse, وَاضْرِبُوهُنَّ, waidriboohunna.

Pickthall: “and scourge them”
Yusuf Ali: “(And last) beat them (lightly)”
Al-Hilali/Khan: “(and last) beat them (lightly, if it is useful)”
Shakir: “and beat them”
Sher Ali: “and chastise them”
Khalifa: “then you may (as a last alternative) beat them”
Arberry: “and beat them”
Rodwell: “and scourge them”
Sale: “and chastise them”
Daryabadi: "and beat them"
Asad: “then beat them”
Dawood: "and beat them"

Laleh Bakhtiar, in a recent translation that has received wide publicity, translates it as “go away from them.” In light of this unanimity among the translators, both Muslim and non-Muslim, this seems difficult to sustain – all of these authorities got the passage wrong until Bakhtiar? But her impulse is understandable, as many Muslims today regard this verse with acute embarrassment. Muhammad Asad adduces numerous traditions in which Muhammad “forbade the beating of any woman,” concluding that wife-beating is “barely permissible, and should preferably be avoided.”

Unfortunately, however, this is not a unanimous view. The Koran commentary Ruhul Ma’ani reflects mainstream Muslim understandings of this verse when it gives four reasons that a man may beat his wife: “if she refuses to beautify herself for him,” if she refuses sex when he asks for it, if she refuses to pray or perform ritual ablutions, and “if she goes out of the house without a valid excuse.”

Also, Muhammad’s example is normative for Muslims, since he is an “excellent example of conduct” (Koran 33:21) – and according to a canonical hadith, Muhammad’s favorite wife, his child bride Aisha, reports that Muhammad struck her. Once he went out at night after he thought she was asleep, and she followed him surreptitiously. Muhammad saw her, and, as Aisha recounts: “He struck me on the chest which caused me pain, and then said: Did you think that Allah and His Apostle would deal unjustly with you?” (Sahih Muslim 2127) Aisha herself said it: “I have not seen any woman suffering as much as the believing women.” (Sahih Bukhari 7.72.715)

If the organizers of the Change This campaign expect Muslim men who beat their wives not to be familiar with this material, they are naïve. If they have no such expectation but simply wish to give non-Muslims in Scotland and elsewhere in the West the impression that core Islamic texts do not sanction the beating of women, their focus is not actually on helping women at all, but on burnishing the ever-tarnished image of Islam.

Either way, one group is certain to lose out: Muslim women who are brutalized by their husbands. And that abundantly illustrates the cost of the all too common practice among liberal Muslims, of pretending that problems within Islam do not exist, rather than confronting them head-on and working for genuine reform.

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3 Comments

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Jaladhi | January 15, 2013 4:01 AM | Reply

Deception, denial and intimidation are standard operating procedures(SOP) of Muslims from day one. They are still following it because they it works and dhimmis are clueless due to a thick coating of PC protein on their brains!!

SaleemSmith | January 15, 2013 5:34 AM | Reply

Sadly, attempts like this to whitewash or outright distort the meaning of the vile Qur'an will continue for a long time to come.

Muslims who chose to stubbornly cling to the cruel cult of Mohammedanism have no other option than to knowingly lie about Islam or make up their own fantasy-based version of it.

We ex-Muslims living with Islam's formal and informal death penalty for apostasy know that Mohammedan Islam is a putrid fraud.

>>>>>

Should Women Respect Muhammad and His Islam?

Muslims love to claim that Islam has granted women equal rights. Sadly, this is not true. The Qur'an states several times that women are to be granted less rights then those enjoyed by men.

This article will examine the status of women and their rights according to Islam, as well as some of the many disgusting things that Muhammad said regarding women.

The inherent oppression and degradation of women in Islam is abhorrent. For every good thing Muhammad’s Islam says about women, one can easily find a passage referring to women in the most unkindly of lights. Such is the reality of the fundamentally contradictory religion of Islam. One minute Islam is the perfect religion of peace and justice - the next it commands Muslims to maim, murder and subjugate others. Muslim women should learn the truth about Islam, and fast, if they truly care about their daughters and the future of women in general.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In controversial verse 4:34 of the Qur'an, men are told to beat their disobedient wives after first warning them and then sending them to sleep in separate beds. This horrendous verse approves of and even sanctions, domestic abuse. As we shall see momentarily, Islamic theology also permits slavery and rape. No person of sound mind and good heart could believe that this is the wish of god. Islam is nothing more than the cult of a long dead, selfish little mad man named Muhammad ibn Abdullah.

Qur'an, 4:34

Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no further action against them. Surely God is high, supreme.

Here is an examination of how other translators render this controversial passage:

Pickthall: "and scourge them"
Yusuf Ali: "(And last) beat them (lightly)"
Al-Hilali/Khan: "(and last) beat them (lightly, if it is useful)"
Shakir: "and beat them"
Sher Ali: "and chastise them"
Khalifa: "then you may (as a last alternative) beat them"
Arberry: "and beat them"
Rodwell: "and scourge them"
Sale: "and chastise them"
Asad: "then beat them"

The Qur'an permits men to marry up to four wives, and have sex with slave girls if they want to do so:

004:003
If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice

The Qur'an compares women to a field (tilth) that a man is free to use when, and as he chooses:

002.223
Your wives are a tilth for you, so go into your tilth when you like, and do good beforehand for yourselves, and be careful (of your duty) to Allah, and know that you will meet Him, and give good news to the believers.

According to Muhammad and his Islam, a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man’s:

002:282
Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her

The Qur'an allows men to marry pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated.

065.004
YUSUFALI: Such of your women as have passed the age of monthly courses, for them the prescribed period, if ye have any doubts, is three months, and for those who have no courses (it is the same): for those who carry (life within their wombs), their period is until they deliver their burdens: and for those who fear Allah, He will make their path easy.

PICKTHAL: And for such of your women as despair of menstruation, if ye doubt, their period (of waiting) shall be three months, along with those who have it not. And for those with child, their period shall be till they bring forth their burden. And whosoever keepeth his duty to Allah, He maketh his course easy for him.

SHAKIR: And (as for) those of your women who have despaired of menstruation, if you have a doubt, their prescribed time shall be three months, and of those too who have not had their courses; and (as for) the pregnant women, their prescribed time is that they lay down their burden; and whoever is careful of (his duty to) Allah He will make easy for him his affair.

Muhammad was a deranged con man who has betrayed women. Muhammad has betrayed all of mankind, in fact. Here is some more of what Muhammad said and did:

Hadith, Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 11, Number 2142:

Narrated Umar ibn al-Khattab:
The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: A man will not be asked as to why he beat his wife.

Hadith, Sahih Bukhari, Vol. 1, Book 6, No. 301:

Narrated Abu Said Al-Khudri:
Once Allah's Apostle went out to the Musalla (to offer the prayer) o 'Id-al-Adha or Al-Fitr prayer. Then he passed by the women and said, "O women! Give alms, as I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were you (women)." They asked, "Why is it so, O Allah's Apostle ?" He replied, "You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you." The women asked, "O Allah's Apostle! What is deficient in our intelligence and religion?" He said, "Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?" They replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn't it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?" The women replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her religion."

Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 54, Number 460:

Narrated Abu Huraira:
Allah's Apostle said, "If a husband calls his wife to his bed (i.e. to have sexual relation) and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning."

Hadith, Sahih Muslim, Book 008, Number 3371:

Abu Sirma said to Abu Sa'id al Khadri (Allah he pleased with him): 0 Abu Sa'id, did you hear Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) mentioning al-'azl? He said: Yes, and added: We went out with Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) on the expedition to the Bi'l-Mustaliq and took captive some excellent Arab women; and we desired them, for we were suffering from the absence of our wives, (but at the same time) we also desired ransom for them. So we decided to have sexual intercourse with them but by observing 'azl (Withdrawing the male sexual organ before emission of semen to avoid-conception). But we said: We are doing an act whereas Allah's Messenger is amongst us; why not ask him? So we asked Allah's Mes- senger (may peace be upon him), and he said: It does not matter if you do not do it, for every soul that is to be born up to the Day of Resurrection will be born.

"By him in Whose Hand lies my life, a woman can not carry out the right of her Lord, till she carries out the right of her husband. And if he asks her to surrender herself [to him for sexual intercourse] she should not refuse him even if she is on a camel's saddle." -- Ibn Majah 1854

https://me.yahoo.com/a/FwMNp.ks0u4Z8nzNZLkxIdwnglE-#78d5d | January 15, 2013 8:19 AM | Reply

The facts of reality is that the reformation of Islam is not possible. This is because the nature of Islam itself which is so thoroghly evil that it cannot be reformed. As it is written in the Bible. "That which is crooked cannot be made straight; and that which is wanting cannot be numbered." Ecclesiastes 1;15.
[KJV]

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