Muslim women shocked to learn that their Islam allows wife beating

The Sunni interpretation allows for disobedient wives to be beaten, but how many Sunni women know this?

There could not possibly be any moral ambiguity on the issue of wife beating. Not in this day and age, I reassured myself. After all, Islam had not invented misogyny. Other faith traditions have had to address scriptures and religious laws that have been less than generous to women, I reasoned. Surely, a little time surfing the Internet for perspective and information would help me put the issue to rest before a reasonable bedtime. Late into the night, I continued staring at my computer screen, gripped by my worst fears, enraged by the vile reasoning and the injustice and cruelty that were masquerading as Islam.

I watched an animated cleric revel in the delivery of his sermon, fervently parsing one of the Quran’s most controversial verses: “We must know that wife beating is a punishment in Islamic law. No one should deny this because it was permitted by the creator of man,” he defiantly warned.

As hard as I prayed, I knew I had not stumbled on a lone preacher being aired on some radical network. He was not the only Muslim on the Internet preaching this position. I quickly learned that the troublesome verse has Muslims divided into three different categories of approach in interpretation. This first approach, embraced by the literalists and Wahhabis, is the one that had kept me up horrified late into the night.

The above quote from Ranya Tabari, and taken from ‘womensenews.org’, is a perfect example to show why Muslims should join the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement!

The question of wife beating has reared its ugly head again! Even Muslim women in the West, in the above case the US, are appalled when they discover that according to the traditional Sunni teaching, the Holy Quran allows husbands to beat their wives for disobedience.

This is worrying for two reasons. First, because it shows how little Muslims know of the teaching of Holy Quran and second because such teaching will drive them away. This is why reform of the understanding of the Holy Quran is needed and why the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement was created by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam, the Promised Messiah.

So what is the true meaning of this so called controversial verse? We have the answer right here.