Wife Beating in Islam
From WikiIslam
Wife-beating in the Muslim world comes from the teachings of Islamic religious texts such as the Quran and the Hadiths. Because of this domestic violence has been used as a tool to maintain control and dominance over Muslim women, this has created a patriarchal society where the men rule the women and women are to be submissive. In this article we will explore how wife-beating is promoted in the Quran and Hadiths along with commentary from Muslim scholars, statistics on wife beating in the Muslim world and common arguments made by Muslims and responses to them.
[edit] Wife-beating in the Quran
Domestic Violence is a societal problem in many countries, but in the Muslim world it is divinely ordained and justified in the Quran.
Sura 4:34 seems to establish men as having authority over their wives and the women are to be obedient to their husbands. If the wife disobeys the husband, the husband has the right admonish them, send them to beds apart and beat them.
To have a better understanding of Sura 4:34 other translations will be quoted.
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. (Marmaduke Pickthall)
Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great. (M.H. Shakir)All three translations agree with each and establish the Quran promotes wife-beating. The Quran states two methods must be used to make the wife become obedient and if they do not work, then wife-beating is permitted. The Quran also states men have authority over women and women are to be obedient, thus establishing an authoritarian structure with the husband as head of the wife. In fact the Quran states Allah created men to be maintainers of women and men are superior to women, therefore Allah did not create them.
The Quran also states the prophet Job (Ayyub) was permitted to beat his wife in sura Sura 38:41-44:
For a detailed study on 4:34, see: Beat your wives or "separate from them"?
[edit] Wife-Beating in the Hadiths
Muslims deny the Quran permits wife-beating and sura 4:34 has been misinterpreted, but in the Hadiths there are examples of Muhammed divinely ordaining wife-beating. There is at least several examples from various Hadith authors of Muhammed divinely ordaining wife-beating . There are also examples of Muhammed hitting his Ayesha, his followers hitting his wives and Muhammed not scolding well known wife abusers in the Muslim community.
In this Hadith a woman complained to Muhammed about her husband and showed him where he beat her. Muhammed hears Abdur-Rahman’s side of the story and comes to the conclusion the reason why she is complaining is because Abdur-Rahman cannot sexually satisfy her and she wants to go back to her ex-husband, when she is really saying Abdur-Rahman is abusing her. Instead of scolding Abdur-Rahman, Muhammed tells her she cannot remarry Rifaa unless she sleeps with Abdur-Rahman.
Also in this Hadith Aisha states that she has not seen any woman suffering as much as the believing women, meaning Muslim women suffer more then there pagan counterparts.
In this Hadith Abu Bakr informs Muhammed he slapped Khadijah’s daughter and Muhammed responds by laughing and tells Abu Bakr his wives are asking him for more money. Abu Bakr and Umar respond by slapping Muhammed wives including Aisha. Later on Muhammed gives a decree telling men do not beat their wives, but changes his mind when Umar informs him some of the women have become embolden towards their husbands. The women complain to him and Muhammed responds by stating they are not the best among you and man will not be asked as to why he beats his wife.
Now then, O people, you have a right over your wives and they have a right over you. You have [the right] that they should not cause anyone of whom you dislike to tread on your beds; and that they should not commit any open indecency. If they do, then Allah permits you to shut them in separate rooms and to beat them, but not severely. If they abstain from [evil], they have the right to their food and clothing in accordance with the custom. Treat women well, for they are [like] domestic animals with you and do not possess anything for themselves. You have taken them only as a trust from Allah, and you have made the enjoyment of their persons lawful by the word of Allah, so understand and listen to my words, O people.
Narrated Amr ibn al-Ahwas al-Jushami: Amr heard the Prophet (peace be upon him) say in his farewell address on the eve of his Last Pilgrimage, after he had glorified and praised Allah, he cautioned his followers: "Listen! Treat women kindly; they are like prisoners in your hands. Beyond this you do not owe anything from them. Should they be guilty of flagrant misbehaviour, you may remove them from your beds, and beat them but do not inflict upon them any severe punishment. Then if they obey you, do not have recourse to anything else against them. Listen! You have your rights upon your wives and they have their rights upon you. Your right is that they shall not allow anyone you dislike, to trample your bed and do not permit those whom you dislike to enter your home. Their right is that you should treat them well in the matter of food and clothing.In the Hadiths Muhammed did not scold his followers for beating women, struck Ayesha in the chest, his followers hit the wives of the prophet, and sanctioned wife-beating.It is obvious Muhammed was not against domestic violence and permitted and sanctioned wife-beating in Islam. In fact in his last sermon he instructs his followers to beat their wives.
[edit] What do important Muslim scholars have to say about wife-beating?
Muslim scholars have written a lot of commentary in relation to wife-beating in the Quran. Here we will only quote a few scholars:
If the wife does not fulfill one of the above-mentioned obligations, she is termed "rebellious" (nashiz), and the husband takes the following steps to correct matters: (a) admonition and advice, by explaining the unlawfulness of rebellion, its harmful effect on married life, and by listening to her viewpoint on the matter; (b) if admonition is ineffectual, he keeps from her by not sleeping in bed with her, by which both learn the degree to which they need each other; (c) if keeping from her is ineffectual, it is permissible for him to hit her if he believes that hitting her will bring her back to the right path, though if he does not think so, it is not permissible. His hitting her may not be in a way that injures her, and is his last recourse to save the family.
(d) if the disagreement does not end after all this, each partner chooses an arbitrator to solve the dispute by settlement, or divorce.[edit] Statistics on Domestic Violence in the Muslim world
Given the fact Wife-beating is divinely ordained in Islam, one must wonder how does this effect the Muslim world. Here some statistics of Domestic Violence in the Muslim world:
[edit] Afghanistan
[edit] Iraq
[edit] Pakistan
[edit] Turkey
[edit] Response From Muslim Women
Because domestic violence is divinely ordained in Islam it is an epidemic in many Muslim countries.Even though it is divinely sanctioned some Muslim women found the courage to speak against domestic violence and reach out to other Muslim women who are suffering, although some of these advocates still deny the fact Islam sanctions wife-beating.
Every violent man will be able to see the suffering that he causes and every woman afraid of falling into a similar situation will be able to avoid what happened to me
Later he took me to the hospital while I was still unconscious and dropped me off at the gate. He didn't give them my name, my family's telephone number or anything about me.
When my mother finally arrived, the doctor told her I had only a 3% chance of survival.
The reason why he beat me up was very trivial, we had an argument in which we exchanged no more than four sentences.
He had no reason for attacking me this way, but it wasn't the first time he was violent, although he had never been that violent before.
Encouraging victims
I kept silent until now because I didn't want to see my family being torn apart. I thought that maybe if I was patient enough I could make him change.
Now that I've made my story public, I'm scared. I've almost been through death, so I guess it's pretty normal that I now fear for my life and for my children's lives.
I decided to have my picture published so that it would be a lesson for others, for every man and every woman.
I'm just hoping that the judge will be fair to me and that my husband receives a punishment equal to what he did to me. No more, no less Every violent man will be able to see the suffering that he causes and every woman who is afraid of falling into a similar situation will be able to avoid what happened to me.
Some people have called me a heroine for doing so, but I don't know why.
Maybe people have appreciated that I dared to talk about a taboo subject so that others don't face the same thing.
In my opinion it isn't about being heroic, but about talking about what happens in reality.
However uncomfortable it is, it's better to talk about reality than to pretend that nothing bad is ever happening.
I believe I've encouraged other victims of domestic violence to follow suit.
I'm now campaigning with a human rights organisation which has received many letters and I have also received personally many letters of support from women saying that they will fight back.Iqbal was born in New York to parents who had immigrated to the United States from the tribal areas of Pakistan. She had a strict Muslim upbringing and when she was 16, her parents arranged her marriage to a 38-year-old man. She claims her husband turned violent during their 10 years of marriage.
When she finally left him, she did not know where to turn. Going home wasn't an option, she said.
"My parents ... made clear that they would disown me," Iqbal said. "My father even said ... 'You're lucky you live in America because if you lived back home, you would have been dead by now.' "
She was hiding out in her office at work when a friend put her in touch with Robina Niaz, whose organization, Turning Point for Women and Families, helps female Muslim abuse victims.
"It was such a relief ... to speak about things that ... I thought no one would understand," said Iqbal, who has received counseling from Niaz for more than two years and calls Niaz her "savior."
"Robina understood the cultural nuances ... the religious issues," Iqbal said.
"There's a lot of denial," she said. "It makes it much harder for the victims of abuse to speak out."
When Niaz launched her organization in 2004, it was the first resource of its kind in New York City. Today, her one-woman campaign has expanded into a multifaceted endeavor that is raising awareness about family violence and providing direct services to women in need.
Niaz's mission began after a difficult period in her own life. Born and raised in Pakistan, she had earned a master's degree in psychology and had a successful career in international affairs and marketing when she moved to the United States to marry in 1990.
"It was a disastrous marriage," she said.
As Niaz struggled to navigate the American legal system during her divorce, she said she appreciated how lucky she was to speak English and have an education. She realized that many immigrant women without those advantages might be more likely to stay in marriages because they didn't know how to make the system work for them.
"If this is how difficult it is for me, then what must other immigrant women go through?" she remembered thinking.
After volunteering with South Asian victims of domestic violence, Niaz, who speaks five languages, got a job using those skills to advocate for immigrant women affected by family violence.
But Niaz's focus changed on September 11, 2001. "I was no longer a Pakistani-American ... I looked at myself as a Muslim."
Niaz said the backlash many Muslims experienced after the terror attacks made abuse victims more afraid to seek help; they feared being shunned for bringing negative attention to their community.
"Women who were caught in abusive marriages were trapped even more," recalled Niaz.
In 2004, Niaz used her savings to start Turning Point for Women and Families. Today, her work focuses on three main areas: providing direct services to abused women, raising awareness through outreach, and educating young women -- an effort she hopes will empower future generations to speak out against abuse.
Crisis intervention services are a critical element of Niaz's efforts. Through weekly counseling sessions, she and her team provide emotional support to the women while helping them with practical issues, such as finding homeless shelters, matrimonial lawyers, filing police reports or assisting with immigration issues.
Niaz has helped more than 200 Muslim women. While most of Turning Point's clients are immigrants, the group helps women from every background.
While Niaz has support from many people in New York's Muslim community, she acknowledges that not everyone appreciates her efforts. She keeps her office address confidential and takes precautions to ensure her safety.
"There have been threats ... but that comes with this work," she said. "I know that God is protecting me because I'm doing the right thing."[edit] Common Arguments on wife-beating made by Muslim apologists
Given the fact wife-beating is sanctioned in Islamic religious texts, Muslim apologists try to deny this. Here are some arguments made by Muslim apologists.
Pamela K. Taylor is the co-founder of Muslims for progressive values, former director of the Islamic Writers Alliance and strong supporter of the women Imam movement. On Faith Panelist Blog she states:
To be sure, domestic violence is indeed against the teachings of Islam, and murder of family members is especially repugnant. The Qur'an teaches that men should remain with their wives in kindness, or separate from their wives with kindness, and specifically that they should not stay with their wives in order to do harm to them (2:229, 2:231). It offers a vision of spousal equality when it prescribes a decision making process within the family of mutual consultation (2:233), and labels both husband and wife with the term "zauj" (4:1 and others) and describes them as protecting garments for one another (2:187).
Physical and/or emotional abuse has no place in this vision of marriage. Indeed, when women came to the Prophet complaining of their husband's treatment, the Prophet admonished the men saying that those who treated their families poorly were not among the best of men. Mu'awiyah al-Qushayri, one of the companions of the Prophet, reports "I went to the Apostle of Allah and asked him, 'What do you say about our wives?' He replied, 'Feed them with the food you eat, clothe them as you clothe yourself, and do not beat them, and do not revile them." (Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 11, the Book of Marriage, Number 2139)Either Taylor is ignorant of some of the teachings in the Quran and the Hadith or she willfully ignores those passages and twists some of the wording to suite her own needs. It has been mentioned before in previous paragraphs the Quran and the Hadiths sanction wife-beating, men are superior to women, and Muhammed did strike his wives and did not scold his followers for beating their wives.
Taylor continues to state in her article.
Daraba is used for many, many things in the Qur'an, from sexual intercourse to parting company, from metaphorically striking a parable to physically striking a person or thing. The vast majority of commentators, have understood the meaning of 4:34 to mean hitting. Modern interpreters such as Ahmed Ali and Laleh Bakhtiar , have made a case that this interpretation is wrong.
Bakhtiar's argument is particularly strong. She described her approach to this verse in a lecture I attended two years ago. She told the audience that she went to many, many scholars and asked them, "Did the Prophet ever hit his wives?" To which all them replied, "No, he never hit his wives." This is directly supported by a hadith narrated by his wife Aishah, who reported "The Messenger of Allah never struck a servant of his with his hand, nor did he ever hit a woman. He never hit anything with his hand, except for when he was fighting a battle in the cause of Allah." Bakhtiar then asked the scholars, "And the Prophet always obeyed Allah, correct?" To which the answer was an emphatic "Yes, the Prophet was the embodiment of the Qur'an."
"Then, how," she asked, "do you explain that when he had problems with his wives, he admonished them, he refrained from sleeping with them for a month, but he never went to the third step and hit them? Was he being disobedient to Allah, or have we misunderstood verse 4:34?" To which, she says, the scholars had no answer.
Her answer is that we have misunderstood 4:34, and that we have to look at what the Prophet actually did after that month's separation -- which was to offer his wives the choice of divorcing him or remaining with him while resolving to avoid the behaviors he found so objectionable. While, she translates "daraba" as "to go away from them," (which is the most common usage of the term in the Qur'an), it seems that it might be better rendered as "to strike a bargain with them."Taylor brought up Laleh Bakhtiar, a Muslim apologist who states Islam does not preach violence against women and Daraba in Sura 4:34 means to send away. Bakhtiar has written her own version of the Quran with sura 4:34 stating to send her away. Her translation of this verse has caused controversery among Muslim scholars and the ISNA of Canada is refusing to sell her book in their bookstore.
In regards to Bakhtiar statement about Muhammed not hitting his wives, that is a complete lie. As posted before Muhammed did hit Ayesha and did not show any concern when his followers hit his wives.
Also her argument about Daraba has been refuted by other scholars in our article Beat your wives or "separate from them"?.
[edit] Conclusion
Wife-beating is divinely sanctioned in the Quran and Hadiths and is viewed as a method to keep the wife under control and despite some of the statements made by Muslim apologists, wife-beating is institutionalized in Islam. Muhammed had no problem with telling his followers it is ok to beat their wives and had total disregard for the safety and emotional well-being of his female followers when they complained to him about their husbands. In fact he had no problem with hitting Aisha and with Abu Bakr and Umar hitting his wives.
The article also shows the deceptive means Muslim apologists use to cover up the fact the Quran and Hadith sanction wife-beating by using other verses of the Quran in an attempt to support their view that Islam promotes equality between men and women, wife-beating is forbidden and sura 4:34 has been misinterpreted. The problem with their argument is it only reveals the inconsistencies of the Quran, and their arguments have been debunked, by Islamic scholars and the Hadiths.
[edit] References
[edit] See also
- Beat your wives or "separate from them"?
- Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Women
- Statistics
- The Farewell Sermon
[edit] External Links
- Wife Beating in Islam by Silas
- Islam and domestic violence (Wikipedia)
- Domestic violence in Islam: The Quran on wife-beating by James Arlandson
- Saudi Judge Says it's Ok for Men to Beat Their Wives
- Video: Woman Hit For Not Wearing Burka(warning, contains scenes of woman being slapped a number of times; may be disturbing to some viewers)
- Her 'duty' is helping Muslim women heal after abuse - CNN
