More Muslim Wife Beating Justification

Urbanist:
Yes, woman is like an object or merchandise. I would like to invite you to watch those two saudi chicks:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0ytiXRyc0qk

I watched that video 10 times, every time I watch it, I feel like crying or laughing. And, every time I watch another video after it, which is:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=YhZnsqBJ1_w

The other video shot in Gaza! Let you guys watch and have fun.

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Well, to start off, I appreciate your curiosity about Islam, John. I’ve had a quick look on the other article about beating women, but didn’t have time to read everything, but I’d love to add a few remarks:

• The man in the video above is not a ‘holy’ man, he is a scholar, and for Islam, he’s like a doctor in medicine. He can be an expert, but he’s not protected from making mistakes.
• Women do not have catalogs or manuals. Quran is my holy book (I am a Muslim), but I don’t see it as a women’s manual. I think this is condescending.
• Beating women has always existed, in all countries, all cultures, all religions, everywhere… Islam came to put a limit for it, and I guess you heard the other scholar enumerate the conditions of what would be an ‘acceptable’ beating.

So the fact that you have some law in the States that forbids beating women does not change the fact that there are American wives beaten every day. And no, not all of them are married to Muslim men, I strongly believe so.

• Men are NOT superior to women in Islam. None of the Islamic aspects that you consider lowering women are. Please do not compare other living and cultural standards to yours, and then maybe you’ll understand better.
• If men can beat their wives when they are ‘misbehaving’, women can ‘treat’ (as the scholar said) their husbands when they are misbehaving as well. But the difference is that women, by instinct and nature, just don’t beat men. This does no suggest any inferiority, it does suggest that men and women are different, and thus have different ways to treat the same issue.
• I personally don’t believe men and women are equal. And I believe that if you and I got down to analyzing our perceptions about men and women, we’ll find out that the difference is semantic and that at the end, we both agree.

So whatever the deity you guys are worshiping, whatever your standards of good and justice are, please do concentrate on knowing our similarities rather than focusing on our differences. You’ll find out that we are living differently, but we just are the same.

• “I nearly fell out of my chair watching those women try to eat spaghetti with that mask on their face!”

That’s not a mask, it’s a veil. And let’s put that aside please, for it has not relevance in your topic.

As for the second video Adi, you’d better be crying. I don’t see anything funny about that video. When you are in a city like Ghaza, with bombings and dead/injured people all around, I don’t expect you to walk calmly, or take the time to park the ambulance properly before picking up the person injured.

I don’t see why these videos were brought up in this topic, but they show that that commentator doesn’t seem to have a clue of what’s being discussed here.

I might be back to answer more of your questions that were left in the comments of the other article.
Peace!

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I tried to add more interesting videos, probably they are not quite related but I just wanted to share them. Thus, this is not because I have no clue about the topic as you claimed.

Anyway, thank you for all your opinions. Even though, i am not convinced of most of it as I lived in the middle east for 20 years before living in both France and the great America. As such, I know precisely women rights in the west and east.

Thanks,

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Just a quick note for now: I still can’t see the comments here, so I’ll wait until I see them (hopefully tomorrow) before I come back to reply to your comment (I need to see the comments here for my own peace of mind).

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Wow. This is what blogging is REALLY about — a dialog between people across the country and across the world.

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Even though I can’t see the comments, and with the risk of missing some comment here or there, I’d love to answer those I could read.

@Adi: The videos suggest that the person who posted them has no clue about the topic here, that’s one thing. Now if you do know what the topic is about and still posted these videos, that’s another thing, and it doesn’t change that they were irrelevant. And if John is up to making a whole blog entry about the veil, or how Palestinians should maintain their logical thinking and calmness during bombings to save injured people (this is how I understood the video), then I’ll be glad to come in and put my two cents about these.

I guess that you lived in Israel, when you meant living in the Middle East. If that’s the case, are you sure that enables you to fully understand all the cultures, traditions and religion of all your neighbor countries? That’s actually applicable to living in any country in the ME, but Israel is even more of a special case.

I actually can’t be that affirmative about countries I am familiar with.

@MG: I personally don’t see the link between your article and this topic, but as you said, maybe as an ‘outsider’ you relate to it. I hope my comments here will help you understand even a little bit our reasoning. :)

@John: Please do not take what I say as the ultimate truth about Islam, nor myself as a representative of Muslim women, but I am telling you what I know and how I see things. I am open for corrections from people who know better about my religion, as I am open to your comments and questions. No offense taken, but you’ll understand that I may get sarcastic or irritated sometimes, and that will only enrich the discussion, I hope. ;)

- “Men are NOT superior to women” in Islam, I repeat it. If there is any controversial verse in Quran, then it’s the one you mentioned. Beating women is one of the top topics put in anti-Islamic websites.
Let me first explain that Quran is written in Arabic, and this language is so rich in meanings, that one word without vocalization can be read in many ways, thus having many meanings, so wonder how misleading can translation be sometimes. This happens with Quran too. Did you know that all Muslims around the world pray in Arabic? If that should tell you anything, it indicates the importance of understanding Quran in its original language.

So, for verse 4.34, the original verse says that men are “qawwamun” over women. The very strict translation of this word is NOT by any means ‘superior’. Another translation of that verse would be “Men are [qawwamun] over women, because Allah has given the one more than the other, and because they support them from their means.” Now what has Allah given to men more than women, that somehow gives them a plus over them you think? I personally see this as physical strenght, nothing more; and it’s this strenght that makes it an obligation in our religion (and also traditions) that men sustain women, especially that women are given the primordial role of giving birth. Once again, let’s not take the example of Western societies where women work and give birth and still sustain themselves, okay? [Even though that's not a rare thing in our societies either.]

As you can see, this verse does not justify beating women at all, and the physical strenght I personally understand by “qawwaamun” is not enough to give any man any kind of superiority over women.

“I pose this question to you, if there was a Muslim woman who had a PHd and earned 10 times as much as her husband, would she have authority over him because she is superior to him and spending her wealth to maintain him?”

That said, I don’t see that wealth or physical strenght or anything else can give any gender the right to feel/act superior on the other, man or woman.

“I don’t understand this comment. What do you really think you could do? Are you not going to prepare my dinner? Are you not going to do my laundry? Are you not going to look after my children? Are you going to withhold sex from me?”

I don’t know you, and I am not married yet to know what a woman can do to a man in general to address some problem between them. But I so do believe that between couples, and with the intimacy a relationship such as marriage can have, both parts get to know the other and how to deal with them when problems arise. If some Muslim men tend to ‘think’ with their ‘hands’ and beat their wives, Islam is here to draw red lines for them. And I should stress on something here: “Islam is not ALLOWING beating women, it’s LIMITING it”. As in ‘the thing already existed, and was very frequent, that Islam came to put an end to it’.

And I would also love to mention that Quran came down to address issues related to the past, present and the future, we Muslims believe; and to my understanding, this very particular issue of beating concerning the past, and Islam did really solve the problem back then. But what to do to some ignorant Muslim men? [Although beating is not restricted to Muslim men alone, do we agree here?]

One more thing before I move to your other question: Never EVER judge Islam based on what Muslims do, always seek the answer in Quran and the prophet’s sayings, if you are really interested in knowing the truth. And I see this is what you are doing John, I appreciate that a lot.

“If you and I were married, and I have the absolute right to control you and indeed physically or emotionally torture you, I can promise you would not be able to “treat” me any way other than the manner in which I wished. You would be physically scared of me, you’d have no legal, religious or social recourse, and this would cause you to submit to my every whim.”

I hope that what I said above explains that the position of men and women in Islam is not illustrated with this case you are giving as an example.

“I’m sorry Lalla, but here you are 100% wrong. In my heart I am 100% gender neutral. I evaluate each individual person’s value on this planet according to the same set of values. But I find it interesting to understand that in your heart you cannot comprehend that men exist who actually believe this. It is not “just talk”, it is truth. Having said that I would LOVE to better understand the “semantics” you perceive to be masking my perception of reality. In other words I welcome you to convince me that I am indeed wrong.”

John, I don’t aim to show you that you are wrong, AT ALL. And I hope you respect my opinion too, and don’t judge it as ‘totally wrong’. Who said I don’t understand that there are some men out there that take women as their equals? Whatever makes you guys happy. I personally wouldn’t love to be treated as a man, and would love to be considered as a woman in everything. BUT as I might have said previously, this does not suggest any superiority or inferiority. If man#woman, that simply doesn’t meant manwoman. We are simply different, in our physical structures (!), as in our way of thinking, absolutely everything!
Should I go on explaining that a little bit more?

“Hmmm… perhaps we should do an article together in which you take the position that women are not equal and I take the position that women are equal. That would be a fascinating and stimulating conversation! But I digress…”

That will be very interesting! This discussion is actually getting larger and larger, and I might neglect some important detail or another, so your idea sounds really interesting. Comments are not practical for such discussions.

“I worship no deity. As a result of making that public statement does it diminish your respect for me?”

Oh my! NO! I wanted to add something about atheists and all the other non-worshiping groups, but I couldn’t rephrase the sentence. Please bear in mind that English is not my native language, it’s only my 4th. So before we get into linguistic misunderstandings, always consider the possibility that I used a word instead of another, or that I lack of vocabulary. And I know from experience that even typos can cause some catastrophes. :D [Imagine that I tell someone "say hell to your family", meaning "hello" obviously! LOL]

Your question reminds me of a remark I forgot to add in my first comment: the scholar in the video has NO right to call non-Muslims ‘infidels’. Please refer to my request to never judge Islam based on what Muslims do/say, including scholars and myself.

“In your mind did you just label me an “infidel”? Be honest! If so, you do not actually believe that you and I are the same.”

I am actually reading your comment as I am replying, so HA! I just partially answered your question above. And NO, I do not consider you as an infidel, it truly didn’t even cross my mind, and I don’t even have the right to ask you what religion/non-religion you belong to. And my very own idea/principle of us being the same, is not based on the similarity between the deities we might be worshiping, but it’s based on the same (I believe) standards of good and justice that we all might have.

If a Muslim considers someone as an infidel/non-believer, they are actually committing a huge sin in Islam, because only Allah know what’s in His creatures’ hearts, we believe.

“Au contraire! I believe it is a symptom of the larger problem. You may label it whatever you like, but what I see is a mechanism instituted to control women. I think of it the following way:…”

Was what you expressed at this point your own opinions/perceptions of the veil, or someone else’s words?
May I ask that we have this whole issue of the veil in another comment, or blog entries debate? I insist on discussing it, I do not want to let this detail go. :)

“Now, back to the equality issue. Let’s say for a second that I am a handsome man (OK, I know that I’m not… but can we pretend? :-)). If you and I were sitting down over a cup of coffee why should you get the pleasure of seeing my attractiveness, and I not get the same benefit? In other words, what right do women have to stare at and fantasize about attractive men and why don’t men have the same rights?”

Because you suppose the Islamic veil is black and covers the whole body, right? Let’s get back to that later! Besides this being another whole topic (even if, au contraire :), you consider it related to beating women), it’s late in my end and I should go to bed (because I want to, not because my ‘owner’ ordered me to ;)].

That said, sorry to break the record of the longest comment on your blog ;), thanks for the ‘healthy debate’, and I will be back! [Allah willing.]

“As far as the e-mail issue is concerned, thanks for letting me know as I’ve now fixed that problem! It’s been broken since I started this blog well over a year ago and no one has ever mentioned it before now. ;-)”

You’re welcome! :)

@JasonJ: I hope you take the time to read my answers to John, should you have any questions, I’ll be glad to answer. :)

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John, the fact that you read the Quran, especially in another language than Arabic, doesn’t guarantee that you understand it all. Even Arabic native speakers need interpretation books (based on the prophet’s explanations and scholars’ work) to understand Quran, so let alone reading translation. I would love to ask you to just make a small research about each verse before misinterpret it too, and you’ll most likely find its background, why it came down, whom it is addressing.
Because otherwise, imagine that you read the verse that starts “and don’t drink (alcoholic drinks obviously) while praying”. ;) You’d think it’s okay to drink while not praying.
- Islam puts limits to beating, it does not allow it. — There is a difference!
- Men are not superior to women in Islam.
- The scholar in the video is misinterpreting a Quranic verse, and sure do many Muslims. That doesn’t ‘create’ the fact that ‘beating is allowed in Islam’.

I guess I made my point clear, and tried to show you how things are in Islam. Now if you don’t see things like me, or if you understand my point at least and don’t agree, I guess there is nothing more I can do.

See you!

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OK this person has obviously been consuming a whole lot of drugs IMHO.

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