{"id":2866,"date":"2006-11-06T00:13:05","date_gmt":"2006-11-06T07:13:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/11\/06\/the-chapter-four-verse-thirty-four-dance\/"},"modified":"2006-11-06T00:13:05","modified_gmt":"2006-11-06T07:13:05","slug":"the-chapter-four-verse-thirty-four-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=2866","title":{"rendered":"The Chapter Four, Verse Thirty-Four Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interesting article by Asra Q. Nomani, a muslim peace activist, entitled “Clothes Aren’t The Issue<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

When dealing with a “disobedient wife,” a Muslim man has a number of options. First, he should remind her of “the importance of following the instructions of the husband in Islam.” If that doesn’t work, he can “leave the wife’s bed.” Finally, he may “beat” her, though it must be without “hurting, breaking a bone, leaving blue or black marks on the body and avoiding hitting the face, at any cost.”<\/p>\n

Such appalling recommendations, drawn from the book “Woman in the Shade of Islam” by Saudi scholar Abdul Rahman al-Sheha, are inspired by as authoritative a source as any Muslim could hope to find: a literal reading of the 34th verse of the fourth chapter of the Koran, An-Nisa , or Women. “[A]nd (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them,” reads one widely accepted translation.<\/p>\n

The notion of using physical punishment as a “disciplinary action,” as Sheha suggests, especially for “controlling or mastering women” or others who “enjoy being beaten,” is common throughout the Muslim world. Indeed, I first encountered Sheha’s work at my Morgantown mosque, where a Muslim student group handed it out to male worshipers after Friday prayers one day a few years ago.<\/p>\n

Verse 4:34 retains a strong following, even among many who say that women must be treated as equals under Islam. Indeed, Muslim scholars and leaders have long been doing what I call “the 4:34 dance” — they reject outright violence against women but accept a level of aggression that fits contemporary definitions of domestic violence. […]<\/p>\n

Born into a conservative Muslim family that emigrated from Hyderabad, India, to West Virginia, I have seen many female relatives in India cloak themselves head to toe in black burqas and abandon their education and careers for marriage. But the Islam I knew was a gentle one. I was never taught that a man could — or should — physically discipline his wife. Abusing anyone, I was told, violated Islamic tenets against zulm<\/em>, or cruelty. My family adhered to the ninth chapter of the Koran, which says that men and women “are friends and protectors of one another.”<\/p>\n

However, the kidnapping and killing of my friend and colleague Daniel Pearl in 2002 forced me to confront the link between literalist interpretations of the Koran that sanction violence in the world and those that sanction violence against women. For critics of Islam, 4:34 is the smoking gun that proves that Islam is misogynistic and intrinsically violent. Read literally, it is as troubling as Koranic verses such as At-Tauba (“The Repentance”) 9:5, which states that Muslims should “slay the pagans wherever ye find them” or Al-M\u00e2’idah (“The Table Spread with Food”) 5:51, which reads, “Take not the Jews and Christians as friends.”<\/p>\n

Although Islamic historians agree that the prophet Muhammad never hit a woman, it is also clear that Muslim communities face a domestic violence problem. A 2003 study of 216 Pakistani women found that 97 percent had experienced such abuse; almost half of them reported being victims of nonconsensual sex. Earlier this year, the state-run General Union of Syrian Women released a report showing that one in four married Syrian women is the victim of domestic violence. […]<\/p>\n

As long as the beating of women is acceptable in Islam, the problem of suicide bombers, jihadists and others who espouse violence will not go away; to me, they form part of a continuum. When 4:34 came into being in the 7th century, its pronouncements toward women were revolutionary, given that women were considered little more than chattel at the time. But 1,400 years later, the world is a different place and so, too, must our interpretations be different, retaining the progressive spirit of that verse.<\/p>\n

Domestic violence is prevalent today in non-Muslim communities as well, but the apparent religious sanction in Islam makes the challenge especially difficult. Some people seem to understand this and are beginning to push back against the traditionalists. However, their efforts are concentrated in the West, and their impact remains small. […]<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, shelters created for Muslim women in Chicago and New York have begun to preach zero tolerance regarding the “disciplining” of women — a position that should be universal by now. And some Muslim men appear to grasp the gravity of this issue. In Northern Virginia, for instance, an imam organized a group called Muslim Men Against Domestic Violence — though it still endorses the “tapping” of a wife as a “friendly” reminder, an organizer said.<\/p>\n

Yet even these small advances, if we can call them such, face an uphill battle against the Saudi oil money propagating literalist interpretations of the Koran here in the United States and worldwide.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s more – it’s worthwhile to read the whole article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why do westerners focus so much more on the veil and the hijab, while more or less ignoring wife-beating? I think the answer is obvious: Both Muslims and Christians beat their wives ((It should be needless to say, but probably isn’t, that I’m not claiming that 100% of Muslim or Christian husbands beat their wives, merely that the problem exists in both Muslim and Christian cultures.)), but only Muslims use hijabs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting article by Asra Q. Nomani, a muslim peace activist, entitled “Clothes Aren’t The Issue.” When dealing with a “disobedient wife,” a Muslim man has a number of options. First, he should remind her of “the importance of following the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rape-intimate-violence-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}