The difficult verses of the Qur'an: Nisa; 4:34

"Men take care of women because of the bounties God has bestowed more ­abundantly on some of them over others and because of what they spend from their wealth. Thus, righteous women are obedient, protecting the intimacy which God protects. As for those women from whom you fear nushuz, warn them, then separate from them in bed, then idribuhunna. If they obey you, do not seek a way against them. God is Most High, Great."

(Nisa; 4:34)”

As you notice there are two words: idribuhunna and nushuz untranslated. These two words are nodal for the interpretation, but we will focus on "idribuhunna".

Ingrid Mattson in "The story of the Qur'an" writes, that 'while the patriarchal assumptions of verse 4:34 do not seem to have given much pause to premodern commentators, they did struggle, at times, to reconcile it with what they knew of the Prophet’s (PBUH) Sunna. There are a number of hadith which show the Prophet (PBUH) disgusted by those who hit their wives, saying, among other things, “Do not beat the female servants of God,” and “Some women visited my family complaining about their ­husbands (beating them); they are not the best of you” and “(It is shameful that) one of you beats his wife like someone beats a slave and then sleeps with her at the end of the day,” and “How does anyone of you beat his wife as he beats the stallion camel and then embrace her?”

In addition to these hadith, there are reports that the occasion of ­revelation for this verse was the desire of a woman to retaliate against her husband who had hit her (the retaliation, no doubt, would have been by having one of her male relatives hit him). The Prophet (PBUH)was said to have agreed that she should have the right of retaliation”.

The fact that the Qur’an was revealed to a tribal society, that was deeply patriarchal, sais Mattson, and that it needed to contain both universal moral ideals that could help move humanity forward toward a more just society, but it also needed to give seventh-century Arabs achievable goals. Accordingly, Barlas argues:

[We] can deduce that the Qur’an uses daraba [the root of idribuhunna] in a restrictive rather than in a prescriptive sense by examining the historical ­context of this teaching. At a time when men did not need permission to abuse women, this [verse] simply could not have functioned as a license; in such a context, it could only have been a restriction insofar as the Qur’an made daraba the measure of last, not the first, or even the second, resort. And if the Qur’an meant to restrict abuse even during those most abusive of times, there is no reason to regard this [verse] as an authorization at a time when we claim to have become more, not less, civilized.”

“Barlas further questions the translation of daraba as “hit” or “beat.” In this regard, she follows the lead of a number of other contemporary scholars who apply contextual linguistic analysis to find a different meaning for verse 4:34 than has been traditionally given. One of these scholars is another modernist from a social science background, the Saudi Abdul Hamid Abu Sulayman, who makes a com­prehensive review of all instances where daraba, or a form of the word, appear in the Qur’an. AbuSulayman shows that daraba often signifies “to separate” or “to move away”. This signification seems appropriate as it is a dramatic increase in the distance the husband has placed between him and his wife earlier by shunning the marriage bed. AbuSulayman says that preference should be given to this meaning of daraba because hitting a woman conflicts with the numerous Qur’anic teachings on the dignity of women and the nature of marriage as a place of harmony, love, and ­compassion. He concludes:

Therefore, darb in the context of improving a difficult marital relationship and restoring harmony, should be construed as to “leave” the marital home, to “move away” or “separate” from her. This is the last resort before seeking the mediation of arbiters from their respective families. If this attempt, in turn, does not manage to heal this rupture and restore peace, then both parties should face the eventual choice: “… [the parties] should either hold together on equitable terms or separate with dignity”.

Interpretation is complex. We cannot expect that everybody will take the work to go to the roots of historic and contextual meaning and linguistics. Many times it is not about bad faith but about ignorance. How to eradicate ignorance? The way we are doing it. Write about it, talk about it, learn, so you can contest. It is a long way, but it worths it. Do not let ignorant mullah hijack Islam.