As a child, I once tried to beat up my older sister. Eventually, my bruises healed.

It is so difficult for the western mind to understand why these women don't rise up and defend themselves. When religion, law, and misinterpreted tradition are stacked against them, there's almost nothing they can do for themselves.

I don't know of a solution. I don't like the idea of forcibly changin someone else's culture, but I also hate the idea of gender discrimination (nice phrase that means, in this instance, beating women cuz they're women).

cultures evolve at different rates. remember that not long ago women in the US were in similar straits, and some still are. this is not a defense, I think our evolution in this regard is a good thing. it's only because of our global connectivity now that we see others behaving in ways that we find objectionable. i would venture to guess that a society such as that would follow a path that led to a more just condition, but with the world now able to heap condemnation on them they might dig in their heels, in the name of "self-determination."

it's not easy being here and seeing such things occur, but what do we do? invade and make them like us?

as information becomes more widely available women in these conditions WILL learn that there are alternatives, and actions they can take. it's hard to counsel patience when someone is getting physically abused.....

wow. so he's saying that the Qur'an actually says something different due to the evolution of the Arabic language from when it was written to what it is today, but that they shouldn't care about this?

i mean, i can understand the idea of not changing what is written and the idea of translating something can lead to a loss in meaning, but to be totally cognizant of the difference and to advocate ignoring what the original meaning was in favor of the new meaning kinda seems like, um, what's the word... oh, right, HERESY! and don't the followers of the god of Abraham have a bit of a dim view towards heretics? doesn't their god have a dim view on heretics? granted, those unaware of the mistake are supposed to get some leniency, but by publishing this, and advocating such actions, Al-Kholidy's seems to be fucking everybody who reads it, by their own religious standards.

i think he's trying for an Asshole Fuckface nomination, but not really very hard.

scylis assumes that everybody understands that domestic violence is bad, mmkay, so chooses not to address that well understood idea.

I know this wasn't meant to be funny, but this

cracked me up.

And yeah, there's not a whole lot to say about this given the argument's absolute failure to recognize logic.

...

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The fuck?

I was aiming at a little bit of levity at that particular point, I admit.

The first "this" should have read "the article in general"...sorry, should have been more clear.

I am going to send my father-in-law and my stepfather this article. Maybe they'll move to Yemen!

As long as they photo's and postcards back.

Let's try and not take the comments out of context. It's no good starting out with "If this also does not work", if the qualifiers for that are excluded.

Let's not forget, that the first steps in such difficulties, are removing one's self from the situation to allow it to settle, in the hopes that either party will calm down about whatever the issue is, and failing that, mediation from a learned party. Those things really do need to be remembered. As the article mentions, minunderstanding between classic and contemporary language must be taken into account when considering such texts. Many people currently understand the word 'jihad' to mean "Getting medieval on someone's ass in as extreme manner as possible." In it's classic form, the word means 'struggle'. Doing one%u2019s utmost to realize a goal. Nothing more, nothing less. Someone can struggle against many things, which might not necessarily involve pysical violence, for example, someone can struggle to lose weight, or to stop smoking, or struggle with an exam question, and in classical Arabic, that is the kind of context when the word jihad would have been used, or understood to have refered to. There are many words in the English language where the contemporary use and interperetation is very different to earlier uses. For example. Gay. It is now taken to mean 'homosexual', it used to be taken to mean 'happy'.

Of course, telling a sunni or shia Muslim that their interperetation of Al Qur'an, (based on centuries of scholarly debate) is inaccurate from the original classic text, is not the best way in establishing a reasonable dialogue on a subject.

The article says "beating" is a misunderstanding of language.

But that violence against women is necessary.

That left me a little confused.

It actually said:

and prefaced that with:

So obviously, there is the classical text, which is now misunderstood to mean physical chastisement, rather than it's original meaning, but there is also the issue of context, and what the author is saying.

In some circumstances, physical violence is a sad necessity. For example, if someone is being attacked by their spouse/partner. Violence may be necessary as defense. In such cases, as the first quote showed, there are limits. Al Qur'an frequently warns Muslims 'not to exceed the limits' (in many topics/areas of life) Indeed, contemporary non-Islamic law, allows people to use 'reasonable force' in their self-defense, and this, is what I believe that the author was refering too.

Yeah...but the author is not talking about self-defense, he's talking about the necessities of physical violence against women.

Correction. He's talking about the occasional necessities of physical violence against women (as a response to certain (unspecified) situations/provocations)

Try and bear in mind that there is a considerable difference in social guidelines and attitudes at work here, and what one society finds abhorrent, is totally common-place and acceptable to another. That does not mean that one is right, and one is wrong, it just means that they are different, so need to be considered and treated as such. For example. 50-60 years ago, if a child was misbehaving in public, the 'villiage bobby' would give them a 'clip round the ear' and send them home. Any police officer trying that today, would be accused of, and likely charged with, assaulting a minor. Let's not forget either, that when said skallywag got home and says "PC Jenkins gave me a clip round the ear, Dad..." that would likely have lead to another clip round the ear or a belting from the father, as punishment for behaving in such a way as to require police involvement. Again, nowadays, a parent would be on the phone to, or down the police station, trying to press charges, utterly irrelevent of the fact that their child had been punished for actually doing something wrong in the first place.

A lot of the rules which countries like the Yemen operate under, regardless of how self-righteous they may claim to be, are quite removed from the original principles of Islam as laid out in Al Qur'an.

As mentioned before, context for said 'violence' is key, and there is a considerable difference between chastising someone as a punishment, and abusing someone out of sadism. What one culture sees as justification for chastisement, another will see as unreasonable, and vice versa.

I did not read anything at all in the original article where the author was promoting sadistic/un-justifiable violence towards women, they were simply commenting on a) linguistic evolution, and how that can impact on understanding a scripture, and b) that sometimes, violence is a necessity (for whatever that reason might actually be, but was not elaborated on in the article), and, in the cases where violence is a necessity, it should always be 'within limits'.