Egyptian Sheikh: A wife has the right to beat up her man

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Apparently, some Muslim scholars have become concerned for domestic violence. In Egypt alone, it accounts for over 30% of the deaths of all women - and possibly it is higher elsewhere. Their solution, however, is a rather, I would say, laissez-faire one: to state that according to all respected sources, a wife has the full right to strike back. Here is the article itself:


CAIRO (AFP) - Sunni Islam's highest authority has approved a woman's right to fight back if her husband uses violence against her, Egypt's Al-Masry al-Youm newspaper reported on Monday.

The declaration by Sheikh Abdel Hamid al-Atrash, who heads Al-Azhar University's committee for fatwas or religious rulings, comes after similar rulings by religious leaders in Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

"A wife has the legitimate right to hit her husband in order to defend herself," Atrash was quoted as saying.

"Everyone has the right to defend themselves, whether they are a man or a woman... because all human beings are equal before God," he said.

Over the last few days, Saudi Sheikh Abdel Mohsen al-Abyakan stressed the fact that a wife should resort to "the same kind of violence" as her husband used against her, whether it be with a leather strap or a wire cable, the paper said.

Prominent Turkish Muslim preacher and writer Fethullah Gulen went one step further and ruled that a woman should return the violence with interest.

"She should give back two blows for each one received," the paper quoted him as saying.

 

Is it actually legal for a man to beat his wife in Islamic countries? I did a quick check, and couldn't find a definitive answer.

Legal or not, I suspect it's condoned, and so this would likely make things worse, since the husband wouldn't likely take to kindly to the wife's attacks, and would retaliate with even more severe beatings. I'm not saying she shouldn't fight back, but if they want to do something about domestic violence, this isn't the right way to go about it.

 

@ Splunge: I'm not sure myself. I suspect that in countries that try to appear more "egalitarian" it is outlawed, and in searching for the source article (I found this on a bulgarian internet outlet) I came upon some forums that discussed this; some posts indicated that it is, in fact, punishable by the law. However, as you can guess, in many cases it is overlooked or even unreported. Heck, domestic violence often goes under the radar in Western Europe and the US - chances are it is much more often hidden in middle Eastern societies.

@ Monty: I agree, though to play the devil's advocate here - even if sheikh so-and so says it, how likely is it to be followed? It would involve a big change in people's mentality (not to say the mentality of the local clergy, who will most likely spread and interpret the words of the higher-ups to the average Ahmad on the street), and it's not likely that this would happen quickly. In a way, "you have no right to beat your wife" may be harder to understand than "you have no more right to beat your wife than she has to beat you."

What struck me as curious, and was not included in this article, is that another Islamic theologian from Saudi Arabia has taken such a position before, and has in fact advised that wives should try to use the same weapon they were attacked with. That struck me as, well, weird. If this is symbolic, I'm not sure I understand it.

 

Yeah...bulls***!!! I *highly* doubt they believe that. If they do, then they're all a bunch of hypocrites.

 

Well, it would stretch the idea of equality quite a bit, wouldn't it? Then again, abstract terms such as equality can be interpreted in some fairly weird ways. Look at how Christianity - which, imo, does preach a measure of equality among people - was used to support very unequal societies during the Middle Ages.

 

News from Somalia. At least they apologized at the end.

 

It's been said before but I'll say it again -- we cannot judge Islam by the actions of its most extreme and fanatical people. We could just as well judge all socialists by the genocides of Stalin, or all Christians by the bombings of the IRA. That said, though, . . . .

The fact that even moderate Muslims often defend such extremism -- or at least do not speak out against it -- damns them in Western eyes. The fact that even here they run the risk of becoming victims themselves is lost on some Westerners, but still, the responsibility to speak up is there, IMHO. I can't tell you the number of times I have heard moderate Muslims state that their religion has been hijacked by extremists on the radio here in Canada -- yet they seem to be lone voices crying in the wilderness, not joined by the majority of their moderate brethren.

 

Laissez faire would be a perfect solution, wouldn't it be for the fact that men biologically are physically superior to woman (an assumption unassailable by counter-evidence). Luckily, the NRA has offered a practical solution for that dilemma and is lobbying hard to see it adopted as official US foreign policy towards the Muslim world: More guns, and especially more guns for Muslim woman - this gun in particular. Rumour has it they have Sarah Palin on board. A woman armed with a gun can obviously defend herself against a man armed with a leather belt or an electric cable - and thoroughly solve the problem of domestic violence. Which is utterly brilliant an approach to liberate Muslim woman. After all it was arming woman that brought forth emancipation in the West.

 

Why on earth do you believe that American or Canadian muslims have anything whatsoever to answer for when a few Arab Muslims launch a terror attack? They didn't commit any acts of terror. Here are the first 2 large moderate Muslim groups I found in a Google search. There are more, but it should be enough to convince a reasonable person that moderate Islam is alive and well in the western world. Muslims shouldn't have to prove to you that they don't support terrorism.

American Islamic Congress
Free Muslims Coalition

How many Muslims have you met? We don't make Muslims wear yellow stars, most western Muslims don't wear any identifying clothing, and Muslims don't usually advertise their faith because some people believe they support terror until they've somehow proven otherwise, so you've probably met more Muslims than you think. How many Muslim terrorists have you met?

 

I'm completely sick and tired of the Western media whining about Muslims being jackasses when it's just a few isolated incidents. How many people get killed/beaten to death in the West every day? How many freaks exist?

Anyways. Allowing a woman to fight back would, I feel, only provoke more violence. It would indeed be better to just make domestic violence illegal.

 

Like: Doh!

 

Cant do that as under sharia law the husband is allowed to beat his wife for certain offenses.

Also, just in case you didn't know, sharia law allows for child rape as the age of consent under it is 9 years old.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/07/15/yemen.childbride/index.html
This girl of under 10 had to pay her husband $200 for asking for the divorce even though he(as far as most right thinking people are concerned) raped her. He did nothing wrong under sharia law & will not be prosecuted for any crimes.
He actually had the cohones to say "Yes I was intimate with her, but I have done nothing wrong, as she is my wife and I have the right and no one can stop me.”

Now thats just sick.
If there was ever someone that needed to be skinned alive an inch at a time, it's him.

 

IMO he's obviously a jackass, and quite likely a pervert - come on, man, a girl at that age... how can you be sexually attracted to her? However, I'd be equally usually more furious with the girl's parents. She's their daughter, for Pete's sake, and they better than anyone else should know just how young she is. What are they thinking, marrying her at that age?

 

I do not understand why this is called a muslim issue. It is a religious and conservative issue. Wherever religion and conservatism gets free reign things go bad. Christian arabs are in my experience indistinguishable from muslim arabs when it comes to those values we in the west find so abhorrent. Attack islam to your hearts content, it deserves it but any attack on islam is an attack on all religion.

 

This site here says the age of consent is 15; younger if the court permitted it. So I don't know how the court permitted this event, nor why the parents dumped her off like that (political marriage?).
http://www.cfr.org/publication/8034/#4

The question people need to ask themselves in regards to Muslim problems on the news is this: if the event was done by white people in a Western society, would people say "Damn Christians", "Damn whities", or "Damn lunatics" ?

You could argue that Islamic worlds are more influenced by religion. Maybe it is (not that the West was not influenced by Christianity). But it is stupid to ignore the fact that there are people in this world that are simply STARK RAVING MAD regardless of nationality or religion.

 

Deathmage, the shear number of 'honor killings' committed in the US that have made the news recently (breaking through election coverage) indicates that this isn't just the Middle Eastern variety. As much as they may like to look modern and egalitarian, many American Muslims have still no completely severed their ethical links to extremist Islam.

Joacquin, the only things I know about Arab Christians come from missionaries to the region, so it's understandably a rather select view of the crowd. Could you support this statement? Do Christian Muslims beat their wives? Do they force young children into marriages? Do they publicly execute people?

 

This is true, but just as Christians have let the more hideous aspects of their faiths fall by the wayside, a great many Muslims have left such distasteful articles of faith behind.

This isn't true. This actually comes from a fatwa issued by a Wahabi Imam that 9 years old is enough because Mohammad himself took a 9 year old as a wife. While a few Islamic nations (Yemen, where the travesty you mentioned occurred, and Saudi Arabia) allow this, the lowest the age of consent goes in the middle east is 13, and 15 is actually more common. While your argument [that Sharia law sets the age of consent at 9) is true of Saudi and Yemeni Sharia law, it is not true of any other nation employing Islamic law. The age of consent in Iran, for example, is 15.

Yemen used to set the age of consent at 15, but conservatives abolished their age of consent in 1999.

 

... in the 70's a husband was allowed to beat his wife in the US. The real turning point was when a husband beat his wife to death in front of several police -- who were not even reprimanded because "she never asked for help." Is it so surprising this is a problem in other countries? Progress takes time.

In many cultures wives and children are much like property. A wife who strikes back will be more severely punished by the husband -- he will be "bound by honor" to put her in her place (the Egyptian Sheikh knows this as well). So unless the woman is a black belt fighting back is really not an option. But stating she can fight back is a step in the right direction to giving women more rights.

Along similar lines, spousal rape was not considered a crime in any state until 1975. In nearly two-thirds of the US it is still considered a lesser crime than rape committed against a non-spouse. Most of the Middle East, Africa, Orient and South America do not consider spousal rape a crime. Of course this man does not believe he did anything wrong -- because in his culture and in his country he did not violate any law. Again, progress takes time.

 

T2,
reality based moral relativists with historical consciousness like you stand in the way of Liberty © and Freedom™