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Guest commentary at CNN: Nothing in Islam says you can hit your wife

May 12, 2009 12:54 pm By Marisol Seibold

Nothing. Not a thing. Except, well, 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. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great.

In mainstream Islamic practice, the Qur’an is Allah’s own words, eternal, and direct — not simply inspired in its human transmitters who were influenced by their particular time and place. In the case of 4:34, this fact spells disaster for women’s rights in letter and in spirit: The text itself tells men to beat their wives. The fact that it is the third in multiple steps does not mitigate the fact that, after a man believes he has jumped through the appropriate hoops, the Qur’an says to hit your wife.

The broader spirit of 4:34 only compounds that disaster, endorsing the subjugation of women as the proper, divinely ordained order of things, and setting a far-reaching standard whereby violence is an acceptable recourse in domestic disputes. No, the Qur’an doesn’t say to hit your wife if she spends too much, but at the end of the day, the Qur’an does say you can hit supposedly disobedient women. But the commentator below cannot bring herself to address this verse. In fact, she denies anything of this sort exists.

The original report, along with a comprehensive treatment of the “lost in translation” canard, can be found here.

“Commentary: Wife-slapping not OK in Islam,” by Qanta A. Ahmed for CNN, May 12:

NEW YORK (CNN) — A judge in Saudi Arabia has said husbands are allowed to slap their wives if they spend lavishly, a Saudi newspaper reported this past weekend. In one fell swoop, the judge debased Islam, vilified the kingdom and disregarded the ideals the Saudi monarch himself embraces.

How sure are you that Abdullah doesn’t hit his wife… er, wives?

Islam is very clear on this issue: Both a husband physically chastising his wife for “overspending” and a judge “upholding justice” by sanctioning this abuse would be acting counter to Islam’s ideals of compassion and justice.

There is no basis in Islamic theology to support domestic abuse of any kind and specifically none pertaining to the matter of a wife’s spending pattern. […]

The only way for the above sentence to stand is if one believes it is possible to strike your wife without it being “abuse.” That is unacceptable by Western standards.

In March, more than 1,600 academics from more than 30 countries convened in Riyadh at the first symposium studying domestic violence in the kingdom. Together, international academics examined, measured and evaluated the growing reports of domestic violence and child abuse in the kingdom with a view to formulating solutions….

There have been multiple conferences of this type. All deny the basis for domestic violence in Islamic tradition, scripture, and sharia law, and thus impose on themselves a crippling limitation for truly fighting domestic violence in the kingdom.

The rest of the commentary can be found at the link above, and deals in the standard set of apologetics — for example, that Saudi women actually have it pretty good, the abaya is “liberating,” and so forth.

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