But why does a man need to hit his wife at all? With anything? Why would a woman, and not a man, deserve to be hit, even if very lightly or symbolically? That’s extremely patronizing and thus sexist to me. I would never want my partner to hit me with anything to “discipline” or “punish” me as if I were a young child he was responsible for molding and raising. Even my parents wouldn’t do that.

“It is saying that the most angry you can get is to hit your wife with a misvak and not on the face and not so it leaves a mark…so what would be the point of that anyway?”

So what’s the point of hitting someone if you can’t leave a mark? Interesting comment. You can hit someone pretty hard without leaving a mark.

I prefer Leila Bakhtiar’s interpretation of this verse. The misvak one is a very weak one.

@Sobia…I don’t think the miswak interpretation is sexist…what the point of it is that it limits a man’s anger. It is saying that the most angry you can get is to hit your wife with a misvak and not on the face and not so it leaves a mark…so what would be the point of that anyway?….
of course men are not told it from that way….they just see it in its literal sense so I totally agree, education is the key. Women need to know what their rights are and they need backing to assert them.
It is a zero sum game for men to give up even a little power but its time they realised that power is not going to help in front of Allah (swt).

Not all violence Muslim women experience has to do with Islam. In fact, not everything a Muslim does has to do with Islam. Having said that, you are right that there are many who justify violence against women using Islam.

There needs to be a strong effort to educate both Muslim men and women of the alternate and non-sexist interpretation of the particular verse that has been used. The commonly believed interpretation (even if one was to believe the “misvak” version, that’s still pretty sexist). This is an uphill challenge indeed and unfortunately. Men have a hard time giving up their power over women. Look at North America. Men still haven’t allowed women equality here.

Education is the key. How to get that education to people, I’m not sure. Once they know its not Islam, then we’ll have to eliminate patriarchy and misogyny.

A couple of years after I stopped visiting, a horrific fire broke out in a school in Mecca, home to the Muslim world’s holiest site. Fifteen girls burned to death because morality police standing outside the school wouldn’t let them out of the burning building. Why? Because they weren’t wearing headscarves and abayas, the black cloaks that girls and women must wear in public in Saudi Arabia.

That should be the caption for the attitude exhibited by Western people who think they are “standing up for Muslim women”.

It IS the single best summary of the attitude towards the domestic lives of Muslims I think I’ve ever read.

The single-mindedness it takes to announce– on a site for, by and about Muslim women across cultures– that living in an Islamic country for a year (!) qualifies her as an authority on women in Islam is bad enough. But then to be so snide and dismissive of Muslim women whose experiences do not fit within her narrow thesis, and lashing out instead of engaging? Inexcusable. Is this how she represents her profession online?

She is a walking illustration of why new media is important and valuable–especially for chronically under- and misrepresented populations– rather than the opposite.

Both your original essay and your responses to her were really well done.

Thanks.

@Kalimaat Yes, I agree that Nomani and Elthawy are two completely different writers. Yet there are specific incidences where they both seek to speak for all Muslim women in ways that actually render Muslim women as invisible and monolithic. For instance in Elthawy’s writing hijab bares the sole burden for the sexual harrassment that Muslim women face in Egypt. For Nomani the wearers of hijab are characterized as vain, richies with no spiritual appreciation for Islam. So while their aims may be different they still in certain arenas lack the nuance that is necessary to render their subjects as living breathing human beings.

Yet, what I am increasingly more aware of is how gender issues that are regionally specific are universally applied to represent what Islam is and does to women especially in the writings of South Asian and Arab women in the West. And I am not trying to make a tired culture vs Islam argument. I really think it takes a deep level of arrogance and myopia to continue to ignore the fact that one nation/experience/ethnicity does not own Islam. Margari Azizah Hill writes about this on her blog. It expresses some of my sentiments.

http://azizaizmargari.wordpress.com/2009/08/15/link-between-honor-in-islam/

Not to mention desperate. If an editor from Vanity Fair is concerned with what is said about a single article on the internet, things must be getting pretty bad up there in the starry echelons of the fourth estate.

So let’s get down to brass tacks: I am paid to write, I have lived in Egypt (a theocracy? Does the name Nasser ring any bells? No?) and I’m telling you your article is one of the most poorly reasoned, intellectually dishonest, uninformative rants I’ve read in a long time.

But by all means, continue insulting your readers. You might as well. Among people who have invested real time and energy in the issues facing Muslim women, you don’t have any credibility left to burn.