Beating Your Wife: A Gift For Muslim People

26 Mar, 2012 by John Hawkins

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One of the great fallacies about Muslims, spread by dishonest groups like CAIR, is that their image problems are caused by people who point out the problems with radical Islam. The idea is supposed to be that if somehow these people weren’t around, Islam would have a wonderful reputation.

The issue with that is it simply isn’t true. Islam has a bad reputation because of things like this,

A local bookstore has “sold out” of a controversial marriage guide that advises Muslim men on how to beat their wives.

The 160-page book, published by Idara Impex in New Delhi, India, is written by Hazrat Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi, who’s described in the book’s foreword as a “prolific writer on almost every topic of Islamic learning.”

…In the book’s opening pages, it is written that “it might be necessary to restrain her with strength or even to threaten her.”

Later, its author advises that “the husband should treat the wife with kindness and love, even if she tends to be stupid and slow sometimes.”

…In terms of physical punishment, the book advises that a husband may scold her, “beat by hand or stick,” withhold money from her or “pull (her) by the ears,” but should “refrain from beating her excessively.”

Moderate Muslim voice Tarek Fatah says the shopkeeper should be charged for selling such a book.

“I wouldn’t say it’s hate, but it is inciting men to hit women,” said Fatah, who identified the book’s author as a prominent Islamic scholar. “This is new to you, but the Muslim community knows that this is widespread, that a woman can be beaten. Muslim leaders will deny this, but… ”

First of all, hats off to Tarek Fatah for speaking out.

That being said, I didn’t write a book falsely accusing Muslims of acting that way. Geert Wilders didn’t write that book. Pamela Geller didn’t write that book. To the contrary, a prominent Islamic scholar wrote that book specifically for Muslims and he gave the thumbs up to wife beating. Moreover, again it’s fantastic that Fatah spoke out against it as he should, but even he acknowledged this widespread phenomenon. There are a lot of Muslims who are okay with beating their wives.

For that matter, there are a lot of Muslims that are okay with anti-Semitism, terrorism, Al-Qaeda, clitorectomies, honor killings and Sharia. Those are not fringe positions. In some countries, the majority of Muslims feel that way. In other countries, it’s a significant minority. Those are the people who give Islam a black eye. The people pointing out that there is a problem, aren’t the problem. The problem is the problem and the backwards attitudes held by hundreds of millions of Muslims across the world are the problem.