freediver
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At my desk.
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This is particularly shoddy journalism. It appears to be an attempt to make a problem go away by pretending it doesn't exist.
The bit they got right is quoting verse 4:34 from the Koran:
Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband's) absence what Allah would have them guard. As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (next), refuse to share their beds, (and last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means (of annoyance): For Allah is Most High, great (above you all).
Not sure where the "lightly" bit comes from.
Pretty much everything else in the article is incorrect. For example:
The verse should not be read literally, they say, but in context with other Koranic verses, as well as the example of the Prophet Muhammad, who — as has been well-established in hadiths, which document his words and actions — never hit his wives, and encouraged men to treat women with respect.
The truth is that Muhamamd beat his favourite child bride for leaving the house without his permission. There is also an account of a wife whose skin was green with bruising complaining to Muhammad, to no avail, and Muhammad laughing as women were beaten in front of him.
Also, referring to 4:34:
However, in recent decades a growing number of scholars have argued such interpretations contradict major Islamic teachings of non-violence and gender equality.
The Koran specifically teaches that men and women are not equal. On non-violence this claim is particularly ludicrous. There are entire chapters of the Koran dedicated to promoting violence - kill, fight, slay and be slain, capture the women, terrorise the infidel, the superior Muslims are the ones who kill and die in the name of Islam etc.
Even more alarming, the article leaves out the bit about Muhammad having sex with a 9 year old girl, and Islamic injunctions again making illegal what Islam permits. By far the worst aspect of Islam for women is the sanctioning of sex slavery. Muhammad and the rightly guided Caliphs used the trade in sex slaves as a key tool to motivate jihadists, build their Islamic State and to impose Islam on people. There is no greater barrier to anyone's rights than state-backed institutionalised slavery and it took centuries of military and diplomatic intervention by Europe and America to bring the Arab slave trade under control. Thanks to Islam, this task is still far from complete, with sex slavery on the rise again in the Islamic State, and sex slavery still operating under the sanction of Islam in countries that have only recently banned it.
The article manages to make a giant leap from this reality to Islam promoting non-violence and equality. It is a ludicrous white-washing of the problem Islam poses for the world, easily dismissed by Muslims who are capable of reading the Islamic literature for themselves. It serves only to reinforce the misrepresentations of Islam that facilitate oppression and exploitation by hiding the real cause.
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