Doesn't the Quran's commandment to beat your wife for desertion actually encourage her departure?

Question

Just read the following verse from the Quran:

Quran 4:34 "(as to those muslimah’s) on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them;"

Talk about a self-defeating exhortation

Answer 1

In the backward society that Muhammad was living in, the injunction to beat your wife made perfect sense and wasn’t a paradox. It is only paradox that physical violence towards her would do more to encourage her to leave in our day and age, because a woman in our modern times, thankfully, has recourse to such a violation against her. Violence by an individual, causing another party to leave, can only be possible if there is some place to flee to.

After all, in a patriarchal society of Islamic rule of Muhammad’s time, where would an estranged wife go to when seeking refuge from her abusive husband? She was completely dependent on her husband for her material well being, protection, and her social acceptance. If she were to depart from her husband, she could not sustain herself and would be shunned from society, or worse. Hence, a man could feel free to beat his wife with relative impunity, and since she had no alternative or means of escape, the physical abuse would have been a very efficient deterrent against behavior the husband felt offensive.

As with so many other “moral” decrees made by religions, this one made by Islam’s most revered prophet, demonstrates that religious morality is not the product of some superior transcendental moral agency, but was instead the product of the times. In a primitive and barbaric age, you expect primitive and barbaric morality. If anything, this is probably the strongest argument against religion. If we seek to progress morally as a people, we cannot keep referring to antiquated ideas as the basis of our morality, any more than we can seek to make headway in science by basing our scientific assumptions on the thoughts of alchemists and astrologers of the past.

Answer 2

Muslims understand that the best occasion of a thank you to act as a Muslim is Rasool Allah (observed). He never beat his different halves and advised the adult males of the time that "the best among you is he who treats his spouse the best." The quoted verse (which became no longer finished and not the best of translations by far) is abused by cultures around the globe (alongside with western societies) to assist beating of ladies people. in actuality that they could locate some form of excuse if it weren't there. What approximately all the non-Muslim adult males interior the international who beat their different halves with none obvious scriptural approval? in spite of the indisputable fact that I do ought to make a factor and that's that it incredibly is one factor of modernity that must be observed by Muslims. there is not any excuse for beating everybody, male or woman, no rely what your courting is with them. Beating isn't suited, and, by using fact the previous answerer has observed, the injunction is to aim one's darndest to settle the ameliorations by different ability. Peace and advantages, Imam Salim No, my answer is a sturdy one and finished as is. i visit go away it because it is. It does no longer exchange right into a "rant" for the reason which you assert it does. S.

Answer 3

Another misinterpretation! And the ayah reads" Men are protectors and maintainers of women, because Allaah has made one of them to excel the other, and because they spend (to support them) from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient (to Allaah and their husbands), and guard in their husbands absence what Allaah orders them to guard their chasity, their husband's property). As to those women on whose part you see ill conduct admonish them (first), (next), refuse to share their beds (and last) beat them (lightly if it is useful); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means (of annoyance). Surely, Allaah is Ever Most High, Most Great.
This verse is about the women who defies her husband's authority. He is to use a light beating with something which is non harmful. This is of course the last resort. And note, a man CAN'T throw his wife fromt the house. It is forbidden.

Answer 4

I think the only reason my wife would leave me is IF I beat her, or cheated on her of course. It is cowardly to hit a woman. Women must be protected. Our Lord tells us to.

Answer 5

what's ur point ?
u should not explain any thing the way ur small brain does
u just want islam to look bad & evil
i've answered Qs like this many times before
and u know what?
i'm really sick of u
all the time , ur talking in a wrong way that ur limited brains understand
and by the way
i dont think ur a muslim or even a woman
so what bothers u here ?!!!!!!!

Answer 6

Don't you just love all religions, how often they change and how they are still able to recruit!!! No wonder all the problems in this world are religion related!

Answer 7

Merely stating that individuals will be judged as such by Allah does not mean that they have equal rights and roles, or that they are judged by the same standards. In fact, Sura 37:22-23 implies that women will be punished on Judgment Day for sins committed by their husbands.

There is no ambiguity in the Qur’an, the life of Muhammad, or Islamic law as to the inferiority of women to men, despite the efforts of modern-day apologists to salvage Western-style feminism from scraps and fragments of verses that have historically held no such progressive interpretation.

After military conquests, Muhammad would dole out captured women as war prizes to his men. In at least one case, he advocated that they be raped in front of their husbands. Captured women were made into sex slaves by the very men who killed their husbands and brothers. There are at least three Qur’anic verses in which Allah makes it clear that a Muslim master has full sexual access to his female slaves, yet there is not one that prohibits rape.

The Qur’an gives Muslim men permission to beat their wives for disobedience. It plainly says that husbands are “a degree above” wives. The Hadith says that women are intellectually inferior, and that they comprise the majority of Hell’s occupants.

Under Islamic law, a man may divorce his wife at the drop of a hat. If he wishes to remarry her, then she must first have sex with another man. Men are exempt from such degradations.

Muslim women are not free to marry whomever they please, as are Muslim men. Their husband may bring other wives into the marriage bed. She must be sexually available to him at all times (as a field ready to be “tilled,” according to the holy book of Islam).

Muslim women do not inherit property in equal portions to males. Their testimony in court is considered to be worth only half that of a man’s. Unlike a man, she must cover her head and often her face.

If a woman wants to prove that she was raped, then there must be four male witnesses to corroborate her account. Otherwise she will be jailed or stoned to death for confessing to “adultery.”

Given all of this, it is quite a stretch to say that men and women have “equality under Islam” based on obscure theological analogies or comparisons. This is an entirely new stratagem that is designed to appeal to modern tastes, but is in sharp disagreement with the reality of Islamic law and history.


Sara - Here ya go! I searched for Quran 4:34 in google and yahoo: Nice and easy for ya ;o)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Quran+4%3A34

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Quran+4%3A34&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8

Answer 8

And this is suppose to be a religion of peace right, they will take a piece of your a$$ if you don't submit.

Answer 9

Thanks for sharing. Man if the only way you can keep a wife is to beat her, you must be very undesirable.

Answer 10

Hmmmm that makes sense.