Our readers will notice our blog includes many posts on violence against women in Islamic countries. Some of our readers have asked if this type of behavior is widely sanctioned or is it just a fringe of society that gets media attention. Currently, there’s a fierce debate over the role of women in Islam undergoing the Middle East, a topic that the American media refuses to investigate and clarify for its audience. With a larger proportion of Muslims in Britain, the BBC at least runs occasional stories on violence against women within their Muslim communities. It seems our own media is reluctant to tackle this issue due to political correctness concerns.
By even addressing this issue, some critics are quick to point out this is an anti-Muslim view and that western societies also have problems with violence against women. And they use reliable statistics to beat western observers over the head on this. Others point out Jewish and Christian religious texts also reflected patriarchical mores and have problematic translations, such as the Old Testament which sanctions stoning for adultery (Deut. 22:22). In response to the first point, we’re not attempting to paint a picture of all Muslims as wife beaters. A look at the number of NGOs that addresses this specific issue as well as the existence of a debate being shown within Middle Eastern networks clearly illustrates there are Muslims who do not believe this is authentic Islam. However, it is a fact both the domestic and political power structure within Middle Eastern societies belong nearly exclusively to males, and it’s hard to ignore the elites in society to include imams which use the Koran to justify this type of violence. One would be hard pressed to find religious or political elites in western society advocating any form of violence against women today. Additionally, western societies have taken steps to protect women through legislation, and have instituted prosecution against those who commit such acts within the legal system. Religion cannot be used as a pretext since western societies have separation between church and state.
To put this violence against women in the Middle East in context, a March 2007 UN newsletter from the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, Centre for Women reported the following statistics:
There have been several high profile cases of domestic violence in recent years in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. A few countries in the region have taken measures to collect data and made statistics on domestic violence available. These figures show the alarming proportion of women who experience violence in the home. 22% of women in the Syrian Arab Republic have experienced some form of violence within the family6. 35% of married women in Egypt and 32% of Palestinian women report physical abuse by their partners.7
Moreover, some of these attitudes are ingrained within the culture. A 2004 study from professor Lisa Hajjar, who teaches Law & Society at the University of California-Santa Barbara illustrates this:
The Egyptian Demographic and Health Survey, conducted by the National Population Council in 1995, studied a representative sample of Egypt's population to assess attitudes toward and practices of domestic violence. In terms of attitudes, according to this study, most women who were ever married agree that husbands are justified in beating their wives at least sometimes. "Women are most likely to agree that men are justified in beating their wives if the wife refuses him sex or if the wife answers him back" (El-Zanaty et al. 1996, 206). This finding indicates a high degree of tolerance for domestic violence in Egypt, even among women. However, factors such as being older, married longer, married to a relative, having consented to the marriage, living in urban areas, higher levels of education, and wage employment all reduce the probability that a woman would agree that a husband has the right to beat his wife under any circumstance. Among those factors, higher education and employment are the most statistically significant. Nevertheless, even among the most educated women, around 65% agree that a husband is justified in beating his wife at least sometimes. Similarly, around 69% of women who bring income to their families justify wife beating at least sometimes (El-Zanaty et al. 1996, 206
7).
She concludes that selective translations of the Koran is used to justify some forms of domestic violence, even though it clearly stipulates marital relations should be harmonious:
Dominant interpretations of shari'a accord men the status as heads of their families with guardianship over and responsibility for women.11 The complement to this is the expectation that women have a duty to obey their guardians. This hierarchical and highly patriarchal relationship is based on the Qur'anic principles of qawwama (authority, guardianship) and ta'a (obedience), from which gender-differentiated rights and duties are derived (see Al-Hibri 1997: 1821; Sonbol 1998). The primary source of the Qur'anic principles of qawwama and ta'a is Sura 4, Verse 34. This same verse contains the most commonly cited reference used to assert men's right or option to beat disobedient women. Although this verse is translated and interpreted in a variety of ways (see An-Na'im 1996, 97; Engineer 1992, 46; Hassan 1987, 98105; Stowasser 1998), a standard English translation, which captures dominant understandings about authority, (dis)obedience, and punishment, states:
Men have authority [qawwama] over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other, and because they [men] spend their wealth to maintain them [women]. Good women are obedient [ta'a]. They guard their unseen parts because Allah has guarded them. As for those [women] from whom you fear disobedience [nushaz], admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no further action against them. Allah is high, supreme. (Dawood 1974, 370)
Engineer (1992, 47) reports the historical origin of this verse as the case of a man (S'ad bin Rabi') who slapped his wife (Habiba bint Zaid) because she had disobeyed him. She complained to her father, who complained to the Prophet Muhammad. Sympathizing with the woman, the Prophet told her that she was allowed the right to qisas (a form of legal retribution). Men in the community protested that this would give women advantages over them. Fearing unrest, the Prophet sought and received a revelation from God (4:34) that effectively reversed his earlier ruling giving women the legal right to retaliate.
In drawing interpretative meaning from this verse, several factors are at issue. First, because the Qur'an is revered by Muslims as a revelation, the verse lends itself to interpretation that God sanctions beating disobedient wives as a last option (after admonishing them and abandoning their beds). But because beating women was quite common in that place and time, it also lends itself to the interpretation that God intended to restrict the practice. Moreover, to the extent that shari'a functions as "living law" adaptable to changing circumstances (e.g., through ijtihad), even the explicit sanctioning of beating can be construed not as an ageless and divine right but as a circumscribed means to express anger and frustration, and one that gradually should be abolished. Al-Hibri (2001, 7581) argues that the Qur'an imposed limits on the common practice of beating and transformed it into a symbolic act: Hitting was not to be a normative standard of spousal relations but used minimally if it could not be avoided entirely. She supports this reading by pointing to the Prophet's declaration to men: "The best among you are those who are best toward their wives" (see also Badawi 1995, 53).
Other Qur'anic verses and hadith condemn violence between spouses. For example, Sura 30, Verse 21, describes marital relations as tranquil, merciful, and affectionate, and the relationship itself as based on companionship, not service or tyranny. In this vein, Riffat Hassan writes, "God, who speaks through the Qur'an, is characterized by justice, and... can never be guilty of `zulm' (unfairness, tyranny, oppression or wrongdoing). Hence, the Qur'an, as God's word, cannot be made the source of human injustice" (1995, 12).
The notion that beating constitutes a right available to men certainly contradicts the Qur'anic ideal of marital relations as companionable and mutually supportive. It also runs contrary to the Qur'anic right of both men and women to dissolve a failed marriage, which would seemingly override the notion that women have a duty or obligation to submit to violence. Yet because there is a mention of beating in the Qur'an,12 Islamic jurists and scholars have grappled with the question of whether hitting constitutes a de jure right under shari'a or a de facto option (see Eissa 1999). For example, some jurists have proposed that men should be prohibited from hitting women in the face or hard enough to cause pain (see Badawi 1995).
Marital rape is another form of domestic violence for which justification on the basis of shari'a can be found. Although rape is a punishable crime in every Muslim society, nowhere is the criminal sanction extended to rape within marriage, because sexual access is deemed elemental to the marriage contract. Under shari'a, there is no harm
and thus no crimein acts of sex between people who are married. Thus, marital rape is literally "uncriminalizable" under dominant interpretations of shari'a. For example, Sura 2, Verse 223, provides a Qur'anic basis for men's unabridged sexual access to their wives. This verse stipulates that "your wives are ploughing fields for you; go to your field when and as you like." Although other Qur'anic verses and hadith instruct men not to force themselves sexually upon their wives, this tends to be undermined by the principle of female obedience (see El Alami 1992; El Alami and Hinchcliffe 1996). Indeed, a wife's refusal to have sex with her husband can be construed as "disobedience," thereby triggering legalistic justification for beating.
Forced marriage is a form of psychological and emotional violence. Although the Qur'an does not expressly sanction this practice, the principles of male authority and female obedience create conditions that enable men to impose their will on matters of marriage. While the Qur'an recognizes "mature" (postpubescent) women's right to enter freely into marriage, their status as legal minors often undermines their ability to assert this right in the face of male opposition.
The Muslim Women’s League, whose members seeks to elevate Muslim women within their societies by reforming Islam within, makes similiar points on the more popular translation of the Koran verse that allows wife beating. However, they stress Islam itself was supposed to elevate the status of women in society, and there are many passages within it that support this. According to them, this view did not materialize because:
Islam was introduced to Arabian society more than 1,425 years ago. That society, like the rest of the world at that time - and much of today's world - was dominated by a patriarchal elite power structure. That power structure did not take kindly to the advent of Islam, in particular the Islamic teachings of equality among all people, including women and slaves.
The teachings of Islam posed a threat to the Arabian power structure, which had not encountered a similar threat to its very existence. Aside from persecuting the early followers of Islam, the power elite needed to dilute the teachings of Islam.
Unfortunately for women, much of the corrosion in Islam's message pertained to issues related to women. Why? Historically women have been easy targets; it was an easy way for the powerful to ensure they maintained control over at least one segment of society.
The subjugation of women is important on a number of societal levels for the power elite.
Once women are excluded from the potential power base on a societal level, the next logical step is to exclude them from decision making or power at the domestic level.
As women are oppressed in the microcosm of the home, the battles needed to overcome that tyranny overshadow the battle for equality in the macrocosm of society, and women are thus relegated to a status of second-class citizen or worse amongst less-informed Muslims who live in a tribal-like environment.
To those of us who know Islam and the Quran, violence against women is so antithetical to the teachings of Islam that we look at those who use our religion against us as misguided, misinformed or malevolent.
Our readers can judge the issue for themselves.
