How Islam and the Koran Supports Beating Wives

Executive Summary

• Muslims like to say that there is no Islamic documentation that supports spousal abuse.
• We will review this claim.

Introduction

Muslims have a pattern of explaining away any embarrassing feature in Muslim countries’ Islam or behavior as unrelated to Islam. This is found in the Islamic support for beating wives. Islamic nations have high levels of domestic violence. However, Muslims say this has nothing to do with Islam. Is this true?

See our references for this article and related articles at this link.

David Wood on Spousal Abuse in Islam

As explained in this video, women can be beaten until their skin is green. This video shows a Muslim man hitting a woman in public in real-time to show Mohammed’s cartoon. In Saudi Arabia, women are beaten right on the street for violating various clothing rules. 

Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are obedient, guarding the secret that Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them (beat them). Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them Lo! Allah is ever high, exalted, great. – Koran 4:34

Getting More False Information from Muslim Experts

Whenever one wants to get false information on Islam, and this happens again the following quotation.

ABC News has interviewed dozens of scholars, imams, social workers and women’s advocates over the past several weeks with three major findings.

First, there is a strong consensus that Islam abhors all violence, including domestic abuse.

Second, there are serious, legitimate concerns that some in the community do still believe Koranic texts support husbands abusing their wives, as revealed in the Facebook video above.

And third, crucially, that Australia’s all-male imams are often encouraging women to stay in violent situations. – ABC AU

This quote is ridiculous. And yet accepted, simply on the basis that these Muslim “scholars, imams, social workers and women’s advocates,” who are all Muslim and dedicated to lying to westerners about the reality of Islam. All that is necessary to contradict this is to review how women are treated in Muslim countries.

Then the same article points out later that..

And, as Joumanah El Matrah, the chief executive of the Australian Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights, points out, there is no evidence suggesting women in Muslim communities — of which there are many, diverse groups in Australia — experience domestic violence at a higher rate.

Yes, that is true in Islamic countries and true where everyplace that Muslims immigrate. Why is that, if “Islam abhors violence?” And the more Muslim the country, the worse the outcomes for women.

Beating Women to Death

Women are not only beaten in homes. This woman was beaten to death in Afghanistan. Fathers also engage in honor killings, where they strangle their daughters, usually for not marrying who they are promised to or for apostasy.  

Mohammed had specific instructions on how to beat wives. One instruction was not to beat her face to make her ugly. 

The Debate Over Muslim Domestic Abuse

With more Muslim immigration, which led to high degrees of domestic violence, the question of Islamic support for spousal abuse became a major topic of discussion.

Just weeks earlier, Keysar Trad, then-president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, had suggested in an interview on Sky News that his religion allows husbands to beat their wives as a “last resort” after having engaged in counselling, though he quickly apologised for what he described as a “clumsy attempt” to explain a verse from the Koran.

Some Muslim leaders went into damage control, insisting such views were a “minority opinion” within Islam in Australia, and that it “should be made very clear to all Muslims” that there is never any justification for violence against women.

A statement signed by more than 30 Muslim figures, including a handful of clerics, asserted that, “Islam categorically prohibits and denounces the abuse of women” and “…there are countless Australian religious clerics who have publicly declared this to be the case”.

And yet it did not specifically address the questions and confusion surrounding 4:34: How should it be interpreted? Why is there such disagreement among Muslims over its meaning and application? And why do so many faith leaders refuse to weigh in?

When ABC News first began reporting this series 18 months ago, questions about the links between 4:34 and family violence were swiftly shut down by experts and imams alike — partly out of fear that simply raising the issue would invite (or prolong) sensationalist media coverage and unwanted scrutiny on Muslim communities, who already feel under siege.

The acting Grand Mufti of Australia, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, did not respond to several requests from ABC News seeking clarity on 4:34 (nor did his predecessor, Sheikh Abdel Aziem Al-Afifi, who died in July, just four months into his role).

The president of the Australian National Imams Council, Sheikh Shady Alsuleiman, has also refused to respond to repeated requests for comment over the past six months, including on his remarks that husbands have the right to forbid wives from leaving or working outside the home, including going into the backyard to “put up the laundry”. – ABC AU

The following quote explains that Muslim women are censoring themselves to maintain “functional relationships.”

Women, too, are prone to tip-toeing around the verse: the fear that they might be seen as criticising or challenging all-male imams’ authority is a strong deterrent, particularly for those who work in the family violence sector.

As one professional Muslim woman told ABC News, “We need to maintain functional relationships with these men, so we need to be strategic about what we say in public.” – ABC AU

Repeated Muslim Abuse of Women

There is an enormous number of examples of women being abused in marriages, and in Muslim families forcing women back to the marriage no matter how terrible the abuse. This type of abuse and familiar support for abuse only really happens in any systematic way in Muslim families. In this video, a woman who is later murdered by her father for bringing dishonor to the family tells the police that she will be murdered by her family. 

This woman was not provided with police protection. They released her, and her claims were never investigated. This woman went to the police five times for what amounts to abuse and terroristic threats on her life, and the UK police did nothing. Obviously, this is not only a Muslim issue but an issue with UK law enforcement. This makes the UK police look entirely incompetent. The police should have taken the reports by this woman extremely seriously because this is a pattern in Muslim households in the UK.

Furthermore, this was like a Mafia hit. It was not one person, it was a council that came to the conclusion that this woman would have to be killed. The women identified the five men who had marked her for death. There were also 50 Muslims involved in covering up or otherwise leading the police astray, who knew the truth. Why these 50 Muslims have not been brought up on charges of a criminal conspiracy is another question of the UK police. Is being part of a criminal conspiracy illegal if you are non-Muslim, but legal if you are Muslim?

This story is one of the most disgusting stories I have ever heard. As part of the investigation, it was found that the Muslim killers and accomplices were bragging about murdering this woman. They stated that the murder was good and justified because she brought dishonor on the family. Muslims were found to be “high fiving” as they talked about killing Banaz.

And this a story Muslims do not want non-Muslims to hear. This murder case and criminal conspiracy to carry out this honor killing are based upon Islamic traditions. If this was just one Muslim who had “misinterpreted” Islamic teachings, why was there a conspiracy and a small council created that all agreed this woman needed to die?

Escaping Saudi Arabia

Many women in Saudi Arabia struggle to leave but are captured and brought back. This woman was seeking asylum in Thailand because of her fear of going back to Saudi Arabia. 

She states the following:

Saudi women are treated like minors even when they are 50 or 60 years old.

How women are treated is referred to by some as “gender apartied.” Saudi Arabia has people detained in airports to prevent them from escaping. Saudi Arabia does nothing about systemic female beating, and this female beating extends to non-Muslim women who work in the Gulf states as domestic workers.

Again and again, the only place that critics of Islam find freedom of speech and freedom to criticize only in western societies. Muslim societies create a constant stream of people seeking to leave Muslim societies due to oppression. Still, paradoxically they normally bring Islam with them and then seek to turn those societies more Islamic.

Is Human Rights Watch also Islamophobic? We ask because Human Rights Watch explains what happens to women in Saudi Arabia. However, doesn’t this insult Islam. Perhaps Human Rights Watch should be called a “hate organization,” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Abuse of Female Domestic Workers in the Gulf Countries

The Gulf states, which are the wealthiest of all Islamic countries (along with Brunie) due to oil revenues, import large domestic workers from Southeast Asia. Sexual and physical abuse of these women is exceedingly common.

It is not only Muslim men abusing domestic workers but Muslim women. In this video, one domestic worker accused her employer of burning her arm as a form of punishment. This is likely because these domestic workers are viewed as slaves, and Islam very strongly supports slavery. They buy and trade domestic workers in online markets. Most Muslims worldwide have not evolved to the point where they question slavery. 

Although, Islam cannot be said to be the only reason. In Africa, even in non-Muslim African nations, domestic workers are poorly treated, although not as poorly treated as in Muslim countries.

When Muslims in the Gulf states abuse or murder their domestic workers, nothing happens to them. The legal system in the Gulf states provides no legal protection for those not citizens of the country. The Gulf states have created mass slave societies. Citizens perform almost no work. Foreigners perform all intellectual work and all physical.

This is the type of system that many Muslims want to be imposed on western civilization.

Muslims receive our Golden Pinocchio Award for lying about the lack of Islamic support for beating wives. 

Conclusion

Both the behavior in Muslim societies and Islamic documentation supports beating wives and domestic servants, daughters, and essentially any woman that the man has control over. There is massive censorship on this topic, and it is rather disgusting. Western media has access to all of this information yet continue to allow Muslim apologists to cover up the reality of how women are treated in Muslim countries.

The Expectation of Lying From Muslims on Islam

Islam either turns Muslims into liars to defend Islam, or Islamic societies do not respect truth due to their development. And Islamic scholars are frequently extremely unreliable sources on Islam, as they are in the business of promoting and defending Islam rather than providing accurate information on Islam.

This unceasing lying on the part of Muslims has made practicing Muslims the least authoritative sources on Islam. Secondly, even if it were true that Islam was misinterpreted, it has been 1400 years since Islam appeared, and Islamic societies have had the same pattern of oppression of women. Yes, there have been improvements, such as in Iran in the 1970s, but this was when Iran became more secular. When Iran fell back to the Ayatolla, taking power, women’s rights and conditions took a turn for the worse.

One of the number one predictors for how poorly women are treated in a society is how Muslim society is. Therefore, Islam has the religious documentation that promotes women being treated as lesser and the 1400 year history of women being treated as lesser. This is not to say that women were treated as lesser in Christian or other non-Muslim societies. They certainly were, and to improve women’s conditions, it was necessary to “put Christianity in its place.” Which western civilization largely did. Equally, without putting Christianity in its place, the Enlightenment nor the scientific method would have ever occurred, as these thinkers would have had to perpetually run their idea by a Christian authority to make sure that nothing was inconsistent with Christian thought.

It is beyond obvious that Islam is the major impediment to the Muslim world-changing and matching women’s improvements in the non-Muslim world. The Muslim world never went through the process where it put Islam in its place. And therefore, Islam is still a primary influence on how women are treated, rather than secular humanism.

Fundamental Christianity and Wife Beating

What was curious, is in performing research for this article I found the following about fundamentalist Christianity.

Research shows that the men most likely to abuse their wives are evangelical Christians who attend church sporadically*. Church leaders in Australia say they abhor abuse of any kind. But advocates say the church is not just failing to sufficiently address domestic violence, it is both enabling and concealing it.

The culprits were obvious: it was the menopause or the devil.

Who else could be blamed, Peter screamed at his wife in nightly tirades, for her alleged insubordination, for her stupidity, her lack of sexual pliability, her refusal to join him on the ‘Tornado’ ride at a Queensland waterpark, her annoying friendship with a woman he called “Ratface”? For her sheer, complete failure as a woman?

The abuse went on, day and night, as Sally bore a child, worked morning shifts at the local hospital and stayed up late pumping breast milk for her baby.

“Your problem is you won’t obey me. The Bible says you must obey me and you refuse,” he yelled. “You are a failure as a wife, as a Christian, as a mother. You are an insubordinate piece of s**t.” – ABC AU

What is curious about this quotation, is that it mirrors the quotations I read from Muslim men who were abusing their wives.

The following quotation was also easily similar to quotations from the Koran and Hadith.

Peter then opened his Bible and read out some verses:

“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Saviour.”
Ephesians 5: 22-23

“Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness I permit no woman to teach or have authority over a man; rather, she is to remain silent.”
1 Timothy 2: 11-12 – ABC AU

This is less harsh than the Islamic quotations, but they are in a similar direction.

Something also very similar to Muslim case studies is that the church will support abuse by counseling that the woman not leave — as is covered in the following quotation.

The CEO of Safe Steps Family Violence Centre, Annette Gillespie, says that in 20 years of working with victims of domestic violence, she found it was “extremely common” that women will be “encouraged by the church to stay in an abusive relationship”.

“I know that for many women the experience of violence was worsened by the lack of support people turned to in the church,” she said.

“Often people say it is the guilt of going against the church teaching that leads them to stay in relationships well beyond a time they should leave because they are trying to please the church as well as please their partners … they often feel they will have to choose between leaving religion or violence.

Women in faith communities where divorce is shunned, and shameful, often feel trapped in abusive marriages.

After 25-year-old Wubanchi Asefaw was told by her church leaders to return to her husband in early 2014, he stabbed her to death in their western Sydney home shortly afterwards. – ABC AU

Christian churches are entirely incapable of providing guidance on domestic violence training, as it is both not their training, and they are strongly biased to try to “keep the family together.” The advice provided in the article was appalling, as is illustrated in the following quotation.

In 2009, prominent American evangelical pastor John Piper, a frequent visitor to Sydney, was asked, “What should a wife’s submission to her husband look like if he’s an abuser?”

His response was that if he was “simply hurting her”, then she should “endure verbal abuse for a season”, and “endure perhaps being smacked one night”, before seeking “help from the church”.

n 2013, American pastor Steven J Cole concluded in a sermon that “a wife may need to submit to some abuse”.

“The difficult question is,” he writes, “how much? My view is that a wife must submit to verbal and emotional abuse, but if the husband begins to harm her physically, she needs to call civil or church authorities. – ABC AU

Church officials described in this video clearly know nothing, and should not be providing advice to women who are being abused.

In the following case study, a woman was being perpetually abused by her husband, and this is what her church did to help her.

The next person who came to their house was a Christian lawyer from the church who told her bluntly: “God doesn’t like divorce.”

This is shocking as Christian churches are enabling abuse. Christian churches seem to think that domestic violence is their preview when it is a legal matter and needs to be referred to the police.

In Muslim societies, divorce has an even higher social stigma than in Christian societies. And this does not provide a reasonable way out.