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I truly could not believe my eyes. In a New York Times article<\/a> published on March 23, a German judge refused to grant a Muslim woman a speedy divorce on the grounds that her husband beat her. The reason for this refusal, according to the article, is that the couple came from a \u201cMoroccan cultural milieu, in which it is common for husbands to beat their wives.\u201d <\/p>\n This reason, in and of itself, is extremely disturbing. This man, according to the woman\u2019s lawyer, \u201cbeat her seriously from the beginning of their marriage. After they separated, he called her and threatened to kill her.\u201d The woman filed for divorce and requested that it be granted without the usual year of separation, because her husband\u2019s behavior constituted an \u201cunreasonable hardship.\u201d The judge, however, did not think the man\u2019s behavior constituted unreasonable hardship, because, as she wrote: \u201cIn this cultural background, it is not unusual that the husband uses physical punishment against the wife.\u201d <\/p>\n According to the article, the judge issued a statement defending her ruling in which she \u201cnoted that she ordered the man to move out and put a restraining order on him\u2026And she suggested that the wife\u2019s Western lifestyle would give her husband grounds to claim his honor had been compromised.\u201d <\/p>\n Even though I am not a lawyer or a judge, it seems painfully obvious to me that these reasons are completely ridiculous to justify denying a speedy divorce to a woman who was allegedly brutalized by her husband. Beyond the fact that applying German law should have been the primary imperative of the judge, citing that \u201cmen do this in Morocco\u201d as a reason to keep the couple together is alarming and utterly disturbing iteration of multiculturalism. <\/p>\n Yet, even more disturbing was the other rationale, according to the article, for denying a speedy divorce: \u201cThe Koran\u2026sanctions such physical abuse.\u201d Condemnations abound, by different people for different reasons. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen the Koran is put above the German Constitution,\u201d wrote Christian Democratic Union general secretary Ronald Pofalla, \u201cI can only say \u2018Good night, Germany.'\u201d<\/p>\n Muslims were equally horrified by her ruling: \u201cOur prophet never struck a woman, and he is our example,\u201d said Ayyub Axel Kohler, the head of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany in an interview. <\/p>\n \u201cA judge in Germany has to refer to the constitutional law, which says that human rights are not to be violated,\u201d said Gunter Meyer, director of the Center for Research on the Arab World at the University of Mainz. \u201cIt\u2019s not her task to interpret the Koran. It was an attempt at multicultural understanding, but in completely the wrong context.\u201d <\/p>\n Not only was it not her task to interpret the Qur\u2019an, it was completely inappropriate for her to even cite the Qur\u2019an as sanctioning the physical abuse of women. Muslim scholars have gone to great lengths in explaining that verse 4:34, which literally says that husbands may \u201cbeat\u201d their wives, does not sanction the type of abuse that this Moroccan man allegedly meted out to his wife. Muhammad Asad eloquently summarized the views of Muslim scholars in his explanation of the Qur\u2019an:<\/i><\/p>\n It is evident from many authentic Traditions that the Prophet himself intensely detested the idea of beating one\u2019s wife, and said on more than one occasion, \u201cCould any of you beat his wife as he would beat a slave, and then lie with her in the evening?\u201d (Bukhari and Muslim). According to another Tradition, he forbade the beating of any woman with the words, \u201cNever beat God\u2019s handmaidens\u201d (Abu Daud, Nasai, Ibn Majah, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ibn Hibban and Hakim, on the authority of Iyas ibn Abd Allah; Ibn Hibban, on the authority of Abd Allah ibn Abbas; and Bayhaqi, on the authority of Umm Kulthum).<\/p>\n When the above Quran-verse authorizing the beating of a refractory wife was revealed, the Prophet is reported to have said: \u201cI wanted one thing, but God has willed another thing \u2013 and what God has willed must be best\u201d (see Manar V, 74). With all this, he stipulated in his sermon on the occasion of the Farewell Pilgrimage, shortly before his death, that beating should be resorted to only if the wife \u201chas become guilty, in an obvious manner, of immoral conduct\u201d, and that it should be done \u201cin such a way as not to cause pain ( ghayr mubarrih)\u201d; authentic Traditions to this effect are found in Muslim, Tirmidhi, Abu Daud, Nasi and Ibn Majah.<\/p>\n On the basis of these Traditions, all the authorities stress that this \u201cbeating\u201d, if resorted to at all, should be more or less symbolic \u2013 \u201cwith a toothbrush, or some such thing\u201d (Tabari, quoting the views of scholars of the earliest times), or even \u201cwith a folded handkerchief\u201d (Razi); and some of the greatest Muslim scholars (e.g., Ash-Shafi) are of the opinion that it is just barely permissible, and should preferably be avoided: and they justify this opinion by the Prophet\u2019s personal feelings with regard to this problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n