Wife Beating in Islamic Law: Difference between revisions

Some Muslim women have spoken out against domestic violence. Below, some prominent instances of this are quoted. In spite of such protestations, many Islamic authorities and western commentators refuse the idea that Islamic scriptures could, even in part, be responsible.

{{Quote|[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3667349.stm Beaten Saudi Woman Speaks out]<BR>BBC News, April 30, 2004|My husband first tried to strangle me until I fell unconscious, then he tried to smash my face. 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.

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.}}

{{Quote|[http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/09/24/cnnheroes.robina.niaz/index.html Her 'duty' is Helping Muslim Women Heal After The Abuse]<BR>CNN Heroes, September 25, 2009|Toward the end of her marriage, Rabia Iqbal said she feared for her life. 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.

"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.

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.

One Muslim woman who has spoken about this type of domestic violence is ''The Daily Beast''’s Asra Q. Nomani, author of ''Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam'', who describes the widespread denial in Muslim-majority societies of wife-beating in the Qur'an as the "4:34 dance".

Though they constitute a very small minority, many Islamic modernists have protested against the Islamic tradition and its understanding of the Islamic scriptures which straightforwardly appear to instruct men to beat their wives. While these modernists have had extremely limited influence in the Muslim world, they have frequently been embraced by Western media outlets as possible enactors of religious reform in Islam. Serious, mostly non-Muslim scholars of Islam have been similarly heartened by such voices but remain highly skeptical of those modernists who attempt to 're-write' the past by denying the Islamic tradition's historical embrace of some sort of physical domestic discipline against women. Moreover, to many in the Muslim world, this attempt at 'modernizing Islam' appears to be a sort of contemptible moral concession to the west, analogous, even, to holding the door wide open for enemies with ambitions of 'intellectual colonialism'. As the 2021 edition of the widely acclaimed ''Muslim 500'' puts it, "Islamic modernism remains popularly an object of derision and ridicule, and is scorned by traditional Muslims and fundamentalists alike".<ref>{{Citation|title=The Muslim 500|edition=2021 Edition|publisher=The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre|location=Amman, Jordan|page=59|chapter=IIIC. Islamic Modernism|url=https://themuslim500.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/TheMuslim500-2021_Edition-low_res_20201028.pdf|editor1=S. Abdallah Schleifer|editor2=Tarek Algawhary|editor3=Aftab Ahmed}}{{Quote|[https://themuslim500.com/about-us/ The Muslim 500: About Us]|The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre (MABDA المركز الملكي للبحوث والدراسات الإسلامية) is an independent research entity affiliated with the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought. '''The Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought is an international Islamic non-governmental, independent institute''' headquartered in Amman, the capital of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.}}</ref>