Understanding ‘and strike them’

Understanding ‘and strike them’

by Dr Mohammad Akram Nadwi
Oxford

Men have charge over women by that [with which] God has favoured some among them over others, and by that which they spend from their wealth [on their womenfolk]. Now, the righteous [among] women are [those who are] humbly devout and protective of the unseen [al-ghayb] that God has protected [as unseen, private]. And those [women] from whom you fear their nushuz: admonish them, and part from them in their beds, and strike them. Then if they obey you, do not wrongfully seek a way against them: God indeed is the Exalted, the Great.
If you fear a split between the couple, appoint an arbiter from his family and another from hers. If they desire reconciliation, God will restore harmony between them. God indeed is the Knowing, the Informed. (Surat al-Nisa’, 4:34-35)

In this surah there are several other instances of the construction ‘if you fear’ (explicit in this form in 4:35). In no case, either in this surah or in the many other examples of this construction in the Qur’an, is it possible to derive any absolute conception of a right to do this or that, or an unqualified command to do this or that. Rather, in the event of the feared condition being met, a certain course of action or actions is recommended. For example, in ayah 4:101, if the believers are on the road and fearful of an enemy attack, they are permitted to modify the way they do the congregational prayer. From ayah 4:34 therefore, we must understand that, if the condition is met, the husband is commended to follow a certain course of action or actions. The condition in this instance is ‘واللاتي تخافون نشوزهن’, i.e., if you fear from them their nushuz. What does nushuz mean? The word by itself, not modified by the context of any particular usage, means lifted or raised ground, like a bump on the road. But of course we must look at the particular usage in context.
The larger context is the general responsibility of the husband for the well-being of the household of which he has charge. The charge (qiwamah) is based on the general fact that some human beings are favoured above others (in innate physical or intellectual attributes, in inherited or acquired socio-economic status, etc.), and on the particular fact that (because of the extraordinary complexity and long duration of making human children ready for adult life) men are expected to and, in all cultures until very recent times, do provide economic support to women. Since the well-being of a Muslim household includes moral well-being, a religiously disciplined way of life, it is assumed that righteous men should seek wives who are righteous. (Youthful beauty, wealth and status are nowhere in the Qur’an commended as the criteria by which to prefer a life-partner.) What qualifies wives as righteous is being humbly devout and حافظات للغيب. This last quality is not found among the qualities of the believers listed explicitly for both men and women (for example, in al-Ahzab, 33:35). Why? The answer may be that women spend more time where they are in charge of the particular ghayb related to the private affairs of their household. This ghayb may be material things and information, such as how much and where the family stores their money for safe-keeping; and it may be immaterial things and information to do with intimate matters of the couple, of their children, of near and far relatives, etc.. The fear, which the Qur’an is referencing in ‘takhafuna’, is that the wife wilfully and persistently resists against acquiring the qualities the husband is supposed to want from his wife, his companion and partner in parenting their children.

It is worth repeating that among those desirable qualities of a wife, God does not mention beauty and youth. Likewise, He does not mention culinary skills or skills in household management. If the wife puts too much salt in the husband’s food, or presents it late, or other such things, by which the husband’s wishes or whims at any particular moment are frustrated, this does not constitute nushuz. In such situations the husband has no permission from God to take any of the actions recommended in the event of nushuz. Rather, his duty is to show understanding and forbearance, to control himself in the moment; then, when the moment has passed, and perspectives are restored, to talk things through in amicable fashion as befits fellow-believers under the eye of God who is Knowing and Informed, of the seen and the unseen. Only if the wife refuses to be salihah, qanitah and hafizah, and this refusal is wilful and persistent, does the husband’s duty to correct the wife become active. In carrying out this duty, the husband, in the majority interpretation of the ayah, must do the three permitted actions in this order: appeal to the wife’s good nature and advise the right attitude and behaviour; the next step, if the wife continues to refuse to reform, is to demonstrate the seriousness of the threat to the marriage that her nushuz poses by withdrawing from her bed; finally, if that too fails, God says: ‘strike them’.
Let’s look closely at this expression which so troubles people. First of all, it troubles people because, instinctively, men do not like the idea of hitting women, and women do not like being hit by husbands or (and this is most important) being under threat of being hit by them even if no hitting ever happens in fact. It is commonly observed that men (as well as women) will come to the assistance of a woman being attacked by a man, take her side not his. If a group of women are attacking a man, male passers-by will be troubled but not feel an immediate impulse to take the man’s part. Female passers-by will be less troubled, and unless the attack takes a serious turn and the man comes to be in need of care, will most likely side with the attacking women. In short, it is normal and natural that husbands (and wives) should and do feel an instinctive aversion to ‘and strike them’. But the reality is that husbands and wives alike have far more ways to hurt one another, and do far more serious and lasting damage, than what is entailed in the permission wa-dribuhunna.
The meaning of the verb here, daraba, when the action is directed at persons, without any preposition to alter the meaning, is strike, hit. Other possible usages of daraba, some of which are found in the Qur’an, are operative only with an attendant preposition or other modifying elements in the sentence. By a very odd coincidence, the English verb strike works in a similar way. So, for example, “Strike John” always means hit John unless “John” is a name in a list. In the latter case “Strike John” means remove that name from the list. So, in the first “Strike John”, John could be replaced by him. In the second “Strike John” you are grammatically obliged to replace with it, meaning the name.

In sum, there should be no question, no apologetic noise, about what wa-dribuhunna means. It means: “and strike them”. But then people do disagree about what this means in practice. Strike with what? A big stick, a little stick, a folded handkerchief? How hard? How many times? How many occasions? This is not specified in the sources of the Law and therefore in the fiqh on this matter, and the commentaries on this aya, there is a wide range of opinion. The majority position has always been that the striking must not cause harm; rather, its purpose is to serve as a bodily gesture demonstrating that, for the husband, he has reached the end of the road. Thereafter, if matters cannot be resolved, the very next ayah makes it clear, there is no duty or right on the part of the husband to establish striking or threatening to strike as regular behaviour for that marriage. Neither wife nor husband should tolerate verbal, emotional or physical abuse as a routine. Instead, the couple should move to arbitration.
Some people may suggest that if striking the wife is meant to serve as a gesture why not something else than ‘strike them’? The answer lies probably in the conditions upon which is based the responsibility of the husband for the wife and their household. In most cases the charge placed on the man is grounded on the superior physical strength and attendant instincts and emotional and social attitudes, which are needed in the world outside the home where men compete for livelihood, for social advantage etc. It is therefore fitting that in most cases, given equal strength in use of the tongue, the woman may be persuaded by the fear of getting involved in a contest of physical strength. A gesture from the husband threatening such an outcome may suffice to inhibit the wife’s nushuz, whereas a merely verbal reproof may not. In any case the verbal reproof should be part of the admonishment that is the husband’s first recourse. The second recourse, the husband enacting a sort of hijra from the wife’s bed, may not have the force that ‘striking’ has, even if ‘striking’ is merely symbolical, precisely because of the instinctive aversion to men hitting women.
None of the above will placate the enemies of the Qur’an, or satisfy Muslim reformers inspired by the (present-day) cultural preferences of those enemies. They will continue to accuse the Qur’an and Muslims of encouraging –– at the very least sanctioning –– wife-beating particularly, and male violence against women generally. Although not always so, the accusations against Islamic ways of life are very often inadvertent confessions of the accusers’ own sins, and useful to them precisely as a way of avoiding owning those sins.

The administration of modern urban life depends on gathering and processing accurate statistics to understand social trends. People enchanted by the life-ways dominant in the contemporary West, who delight in accusing Muslims of approving wife-beating, could learn much that is useful from the official statistics on domestic violence in non-Muslim societies where such violence has been recognised as a crime for nearly three-quarters of a century. A striking phenomenon in those statistics is the increase in the number of incidents of violence initiated by women, rather than by men. It is a measure of the progress towards so-called “gender equality” that such incidents are now reported by men whereas, in the past, men would have been ashamed to disclose them. It is a measure also of the persistence of the established norm in most societies (Muslim or otherwise) that men avoid hitting back when hit by women, or avoid using their whole strength in situations where they are forced to do so. This universal norm is part of the complex of the sameness-and-difference between male and female, which enable the marriage bond to serve the societal needs for genetic reproduction with diversity and stable, long-term parenting. The proper context for understanding wa-dribuhunna is al-rijalu qawwamun `ala l-nisa’: the responsibility laid on men is accompanied, necessarily and rationally, by the permission to employ persuasion and a constrained, symbolic measure of force to maintain the well-being of the family unit. To weaken the duty of men to protect women (because they now hate to have to own that they need protecting) is also to weaken men’s innate inhibitions about using their superior physical strength on women. Of course those inhibitions may be weakened also by other factors –– inability to discipline one’s anger, a feeling of impotence or incompetence in the wider society and the need to exercise “control” or “power” over those weaker than oneself –– but these are not connected to our topic.