Wives In Islam Quotes

In the Ummah, there was no tradition of veiling until around 627 C.E., when the so-called “verse of hijab” suddenly descended upon the community. That verse, however, was addressed not to women in general, but exclusively to Muhammad’s wives:

Maybe he was honor-bound to lock us in, by some imagined duty? Perhaps this was an Islamic preparation to make us contended wives? Were these locks supposed to dampen useless dreams that sparked needless desires? Or, was he a mad man, sick and demented?

So it is with Moslem women and their veils,’ Michelangelo said. ‘When they saw Muhammad’s wives wearing veils, they sought to imitate them, and so now nearly all Islamic women wear veils even though there is no stipulation in their Holy Koran that they do so.

Here is something I have learned the hard way, but which a lot of well-meaning people in the West have a hard time accepting: All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not. A culture that celebrates femininity and considers women to be the masters of their own lives is better than a culture that mutilates girls’ genitals and confines them behind walls and veils or flogs or stones them for falling in love. A culture that protects women’s rights by law is better than a culture in which a man can lawfully have four wives at once and women are denied alimony and half their inheritance. A culture that appoints women to its supreme court is better than a culture that declares that the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man. It is part of Muslim culture to oppress women and part of all tribal cultures to institutionalize patronage, nepotism, and corruption. The culture of the Western Enlightenment is better. In the real world, equal respect for all cultures doesn’t translate into a rich mosaic of colorful and proud peoples interacting peacefully while maintaining a delightful diversity of food and craftwork. It translates into closed pockets of oppression, ignorance, and abuse. Many people genuinely feel pain at the thought of the death of whole cultures. I see this all the time. They ask, “Is there nothing beautiful in these cultures? Is there nothing beautiful in Islam?” There is beautiful architecture, yes, and encouragement of charity, yes, but Islam is built on sexual inequality and on the surrender of individual responsibility and choice. This is not just ugly; it is monstrous.

On Egyptian television during a 2010 talk show, a Muslim cleric, Sa’d Arafat, reviewed the rules for beating one’s wife. He began by saying, “Allah honored wives by installing the punishment of beating.”21 Beating, he explained, was a legitimate punishment if a husband did not receive sexual satisfaction from his wife. But he added: “There is a beating etiquette.” Beatings must avoid the face because they should not make a wife ugly. They must be done at chest level. He recommended using a short rod.

We are a city that has had Islam for one thousand years. We had the greatest teachers and universities. And now these Bedouins, these illiterates, these ignoramuses, tell us how to wear our pants, and how to say our prayers, and how our wives should dress, as if they were the ones who invented the way?

Rather than support the rights of women and girls to not live as slaves, for instance, Western liberals support the right of theocrats to treat their wives and daughters however they want—and to be spared offensive cartoons in the meantime.

One thing I really love being a man about Islam is; I can have so many wives and that would be considered as my rights.

That’s not the whole of it. As with many other faiths—including our own Christian one—a small group of zealots have distorted Islam to further their own agenda. When many women took to imitating the fashions of the Prophet’s wives, some Moslem men saw an opportunity to put all women under their thumb. They espoused foul laws like those allowing a man to beat his wife or force her into his bed.

One program that deplored the high incidence of wife beating drew hundreds of letters from angry men, who insisted that beating their wives was a God-given right.

I thought that perhaps Boqol Sawm was translating the Quran poorly: Surely Allah could not have said that men should beat their wives when they were disobedient? Surely a woman’s statement in court should be worth the same as a man’s? I told myself, “None of these people understands that the real Quran is about true equality. The Quran is higher and better than these men.” I bought my own English edition of the Quran and read it so I could understand it better. But I found that everything Boqol Sawm had said was in there. Women should obey their husbands. Women were worth half a man. Infidels should be killed. I talked to Sister Aziza, and she confirmed it. Women are emotionally stronger than men, she said. They can endure more, so they are tested more. Husbands may punish their wives—not for small infractions, like being late, but for major infractions, like being provocative to other men. This is just, because of the overwhelming sexual power of women. I asked, “What if the man provokes other women?” Sister Aziza said, “In an Islamic society, that’s impossible.” Furthermore,

Theologians chided wives who used endearing nicknames for their husbands, because such familiarity on a wife’s part undermined the husband’s authority and the awe that his wife should feel for him. Although medieval Muslim thinkers were more approving of sexual passion between husband and wife than were Christian theologians, they also insisted that too much intimacy between husband and wife weakened a believer’s devotion to God. And, like their European counterparts, secular writers in the Islamic world believed that love thrived best outside marriage.

The Quran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce centuries before Western women were accorded such status. The Quran prescribes some degree of segregation and veiling for the Prophet’s wives, but there is nothing in the Quran that requires the veiling of all women or their seclusion in a separate part of the house.

One day, her husband slapped her face. When she complained to her father, he told her God gave husbands the right to beat their wives as stated in the verse of Al-Nisa’ sura.[152] Then she began to wonder how God could give the right to a husband to abandon and beat his wife … How could that be when Islam forbids beating animals? Are women inferior to animals?

To engage Muslims, we must see them as people, not merely as representatives of a foreign religion, culture, or political ideology. As people, they are products of those things, but they are also husbands and wives, children and students, truck drivers and heart surgeons. They are God’s lost children too, and he has given us the task of making disciples from among them, teaching them to obey everything that he has commanded. 

Yes, and the irony is that these liberals don’t see that they’ve abandoned women, gays, freethinkers, public intellectuals, and other powerless people in the Muslim world to a cauldron of violence and intolerance. Rather than support the rights of women and girls to not live as slaves, for instance, Western liberals support the right of theocrats to treat their wives and daughters however they want—and to be spared offensive cartoons in the meantime.

....It was to complete his marriage with Maimuna, the daughter of Al Hareth, the Helalite. He had become betrothed to her on his arrival at Mecca, but had post-poned the nuptials until after he had concluded the rites of pilgrimage. This was doubtless another marriage of policy, for Maimuna was fifty-one years of age, and a widow, but the connection gained him two powerful proselytes. One was Khaled Ibn al Waled, a nephew of the widow, an intrepid warrior who had come near destroy- ing Mahomet at the battle of Ohod. He now became one of the most victorious champions of Islamism, and by his prowess obtained the appellation of " The Sword of God." The other proselyte was Khaled's friend, Amru Ibn al Aass ; the same who assailed Mahomet with poetry and satire at the commencement of his prophetic career ; who had been an ambassador from the Koreishites to the king of Abyssinia, to obtain the surrender of the fugitive Moslems, and who was henceforth destined with his sword to carry victoriously into foreign lands the faith he had once so strenuously opposed. Note.— Maimuna was the last spouse of the prophet, and, old as she was at her marriage, survived all his other wives. She died many years after him, in a pavilion at Serif, under the same tree in the shade of which her nuptial tent had been pitched, and was there interred. The pious historian, Al Jannabi, who styles himself "a poor servant of Allah, hoping for the pardon of his sins through the mercy of God," visited her tomb on returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, in the year of the Hegira 963, a.d. 1555. "I saw there," said he, "a dome of black marble erected in memory of Maimuna, on the very spot on which the apostle of God had reposed with her. God knows the truth ! and also the reason of the black color of the stone. There is a place of ablution, and an oratory ; but the building has fallen to decay.

The legal structure of Islamic marriage is predicated on a gender-differentiated allocation of interdependent claims, which would be thrown into chaos by a same-sex union. In the standard contractual understanding of marriage, the husband holds milk al-nikah, control of the marriage tie, and the wife has a claim to dower and the obligation of sexual exclusivity and availability. Several early jurists considered the possibility of whether these rights and duties could be reallocated – whether a woman could pay a man a dower, for example, and retain control over sex and divorce – and agreed unanimously that such a reallocation is not permitted. Not only are husbands’ and wives’ rights distinct, but each role is fundamentally linked to the sex/gender of the person exercising it. A woman cannot wield control of the marriage tie; a man cannot be contractually bound to sexual availability to his wife. Thus, following that logic, it would not be possible for one woman to adopt the “husband” role and the other to adopt the “wife” role in the marriage of two women. The self-contained logic of the jurisprudential framework does not permit such an outcome.

Muhammad’s numerous wives have occasioned a good deal of prurient interest in the West, but it would be a mistake to imagine the Prophet basking decadently in sensual delight, like some of the later Islamic rulers. In Mecca, Muhammad had remained monogamous, married only to Khadija, even though polygamy was common in Arabia. Khadija was a good deal older than he, but bore him at least six children, of whom only four daughters survived. In Medina, Muhammad became a great sayyid (chief), and was expected to have a large harem, but most of these marriages were politically motivated.

While the exact changes Muhammad made to this tradition are far too complex to discuss in detail here, it is sufficient to note that women in the Ummah were, for the first time, given the right both to inherit the property of their husbands and to keep their dowries as their own personal property throughout their marriage. Muhammad also forbade a husband to touch his wife’s dowry, forcing him instead to provide for his family from his own wealth. If the husband died, his wife would inherit a portion of his property; if he divorced her, the entire dowry was hers to take back to her family. As one would expect, Muhammad’s innovations did not sit well with the male members of his community. If women could no longer be considered property, men complained, not only would their wealth be drastically reduced, but their own meager inheritances would now have to be split with their sisters and daughters—members of the community who, they argued, did not share an equal burden with the men. Al-Tabari recounts how some of these men brought their grievances to Muhammad, asking, “How can one give the right of inheritance to women and children, who do not work and do not earn their living? Are they now going to inherit just like men who have worked to earn that money?” Muhammad’s response to these complaints was both unsympathetic and shockingly unyielding. “Those who disobey God and His Messenger, and who try to overstep the boundaries of this [inheritance] law will be thrown into Hell, where they will dwell forever, suffering the most shameful punishment” (4:14). If Muhammad’s male followers were disgruntled about the new inheritance laws, they must have been furious when, in a single revolutionary move, he both limited how many wives a man could marry and granted women the right to divorce their husbands.

Profilers may blame Islam, fundamentalism or just bad dudes, Freeman says, but four recent attackers — prior to driving their trucks into a crowd or shooting dozens of people in a nightclub — had extensive histories of sexual assault and battery of women. “And yet,” Freeman writes, “this is almost never discussed, because there is no political capital to be gained by suggesting warped masculinity might be more to blame than Muslims. After all, domestic violence is a problem that spans cultures, and if President Trump were to try to ban men accused of domestic violence from entering America instead of Muslims, he would lose some major figures in his own White House.”13

Ironically, even as Khomeini empowered some women, he also found ways of oppressing their entire gender. The regime replaced the shah’s secular law with an Islamic law, which allowed men to marry up to four wives, to divorce them whenever the husbands wished, and to retain custody of children. The law put the value of a woman’s life at half of that of a man’s life, and the value of her testimony at half that of a man’s testimony. Thus women in Iran became watchdogs and scapegoats, both the foot soldiers of the new regime and its victims. Newly empowered, they were also newly oppressed. Theirs was a paradoxical plight—and at the time, no one could have foreseen how it would one day make women a force of enormous change in Iran.

Religious intolerance is an idea that found its earliest expression in the Old Testament, where the Hebrew tribe depicts itself waging a campaign of genocide on the Palestinian peoples to steal their land. They justified this heinous behavior on the grounds that people not chosen by their god were wicked and therefore did not deserve to live or keep their land. In effect, the wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian peoples, eradicating their race with the Jew's own Final Solution, was the direct result of a policy of religious superiority and divine right. Joshua 6-11 tells the sad tale, and one needs only read it and consider the point of view of the Palestinians who were simply defending their wives and children and the homes they had built and the fields they had labored for. The actions of the Hebrews can easily be compared with the American genocide of its native peoples - or even, ironically, the Nazi Holocaust. With the radical advent of Christianity, this self-righteous intolerance was borrowed from the Jews, and a new twist was added. The conversion of infidels by any means possible became the newfound calling card of religious fervor, and this new experiment in human culture spread like wildfire. By its very nature, how could it not have? Islam followed suit, conquering half the world in brutal warfare and, much like its Christian counterpart, it developed a new and convenient survival characteristic: the destruction of all images and practices attributed to other religions. Muslims destroyed millions of statues and paintings in India and Africa, and forced conversion under pain of death (or by more subtle tricks: like taxing only non-Muslims), while the Catholic Church busily burned books along with pagans, shattering statues and defacing or destroying pagan art - or converting it to Christian use. Laws against pagan practices and heretics were in full force throughrout Europe by the sixth century, and as long as those laws were in place it was impossible for anyone to refuse the tenets of Christianity and expect to keep their property or their life. Similar persecution and harassment continues in Islamic countries even to this day, officially and unofficially.

Households were supposedly run according to the joyless Domostroi, household rules written by a sixteenth-century monk, which specified that “disobedient wives should be severely whipped” while virtuous wives should be thrashed “from time to time but nicely in secret, avoiding blows from the fist that cause bruises.” Royal women were secluded in the terem, not unlike an Islamic harem. Heavily veiled, they watched church services through a grille; their carriages were hung with taffeta curtains so that they could not look out or be seen; and when they walked in church processions, they were concealed from public gaze by screens borne by servants. In the Terem Palace, they sewed all day, and would kneel before the Red Corner of icons when entering or leaving a room.

The extravagant side of Mohammed bin Laden’s nature made itself evident when it came to women. Islam permits a man four wives at a time, and divorce is a simple matter, at least for a man, who only needs to declare, “I divorce you.” Before his death, Mohammed bin Laden officially had fathered fifty-four children from twenty-two wives. The total number of wives he procured is impossible to determine, since he would often “marry” in the afternoon and divorce that night. An assistant followed behind to take care of any children he might have left in his wake. He also had a number of concubines, who stayed in the bin Laden compound if they bore him children. “My father used to say that he had fathered twenty-five sons for the jihad,” his seventeenth son, Osama, later remembered.

Child marriage The Qur’an takes child marriage for granted in its directives about divorce. Discussing the waiting period required in order to determine if the woman is pregnant, it says: “If you are in doubt concerning those of your wives who have ceased menstruating, know that their waiting period shall be three months. The same shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated” (Qur’an 65:4, emphasis added). In other words, Allah is here envisioning a scenario in which a prepubescent woman is not only married, but is being divorced by her husband. One reason why such a verse might have been “revealed” to Muhammad is that he himself had a child bride: The Prophet “married ‘Aisha when she was a girl of six years of age, and he consummated that marriage when she was nine years old.”10 Child marriages were common in seventh-century Arabia—and here again the Qur’an has taken a practice that should have been abandoned long ago and given it the sanction of divine revelation.

Napoleon respected Islam, regarding the Koran as ‘not just religious; it is civil and political. The Bible only preaches morals.’52 He was also impressed by the way that the Muslims ‘tore more souls away from false gods, toppled more idols, pulled down more pagan temples in fifteen years than the followers of Moses and Christ had in fifteen centuries’.53* He had no objection to polygamy, saying that Egyptian men were gourmands en amour, and, when permitted, ‘will prefer having wives of various colours’.54† His flattery of the ulama (clergy), his discussions of the Koran, and his holding out the possibility of his conversion to Islam – as well as his attempts to impress the sheikhs with French science – were all intended to establish a collaborationist body of Egyptians, with mixed results. As it turned out, no amount of complying with Islamic ceremonies, salutations and usages prevented Selim III from declaring jihad against the French in Egypt, meaning that any attacks upon them were thenceforth blessed.

Muslim acknowledgement of the positive aspects of female sexuality has historically coexisted with two views that challenge it in different ways. First, certain elements of the classical Muslim tradition treat female sexuality as dangerous, with potentially disruptive and chaotic effects on society. Historians have demonstrated how anxieties about temptation and female sexuality translated into insistence (never fully achieved in reality) on restricting the appearance of women in public spaces. Muslim worry over fitna – chaos and disorder – has often focused on the sexual temptation caused both by women’s unregulated desires and the troublesome desire that women provoke in men. Second, and in a paradoxical relationship to this view of women as sexually insatiable and thus prone to create social chaos, Muslim authorities have stressed the importance of the fulfillment of male sexual needs, especially in the context of marriage. Drawing particularly on several hadith delineating dire consequences for women who refuse their husbands’ sexual overtures, the insistence on men’s sexual needs and wives’ responsibility to fulfill them has competed for prominence in modern intra-Muslim discourses on sex with the recognition of female sexual needs.

Societies that permit the existence of parallelthe girl’s situation did not meet the requirements for coercive measures under the law, and if the girl would not voluntarily move away from her husband, it could not force her to. As a direct consequence of the case, the social services in Mönsterås had to move to a different location after receiving threats.14 This is a blatant breakdown in the rule of law. This girl’s rights were not protected by those who are paid by Swedish taxpayers to enforce the law against child marriage. And there are many more like her. In the United States, an estimated 248,000 children, some as young as 12, were married between 2000 and 2010.15 In Germany, too, the problem of child marriage arose as asylum-seeker numbers increased. In 2016, the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community reported that 1,475 refugee minors were married, three-quarters of them girls and 361 of them under the age of 14.16 In response to these figures, the following year, the German government passed a law stating that the minimum marriage age is 18 years. In an attempt to pander to Muslim constituents, both the Left and the Greens voted against the law for being “too general.”17 SHARIA COUNCILS AND LEGAL DOUBLE STANDARDS Societies that permit the existence of parallel communities resign themselves to the growth of parallel legal systems. This is the case with sharia courts that apply Islamic law to the marital affairs of believers. Dutch researcher Machteld Zee’s study of sharia councils in the United Kingdom estimates that between ten and eighty-five sharia councils operate there.18 Zee documents cases of women seeking divorce being sent back to abusive husbands by sharia courts and being denied the legal protections that non-Muslim wives receive under UK law.

In the light of the evidence it is hard to believe that most crusaders were motivated by crude materialism. Given their knowledge and expectations and the economic climate in which they lived, the disposal of assets to invest in the fairly remote possibility of settlement in the East would have been a stupid gamble. It makes much more sense to suppose, in so far as one can generalize about them, that they were moved by an idealism which must have inspired not only them but their families. Parents, brothers and sisters, wives and children had to face a long absence and must have worried about them: in 1098 Countess Ida of Boulogne made an endowment to the abbey of St Bertin 'for the safety of her sons, Godfrey and Baldwin, who have gone to Jerusalem'.83 And they and more distant relatives — cousins, uncles and nephews - were prepared to endow them out of the patrimonial lands. I have already stressed that no one can treat the phenomenal growth of monasticism in this period without taking into account not only those who entered the communities to be professed, but also the lay men and women who were prepared to endow new religious houses with lands and rents. The same is true of the crusading movement. Behind many crusaders stood a large body of men and women who were prepared to sacrifice interest to help them go. It is hard to avoid concluding that they were fired by the opportunity presented to a relative not only of making a penitential pilgrimage to Jerusalem but also of fighting in a holy cause. For almost a century great lords, castellans and knights had been subjected to abuse by the Church. Wilting under the torrent of invective and responding to the attempts of churchmen to reform their way of life in terms they could understand, they had become perceptibly more pious. Now they were presented by a pope who knew them intimately with the chance of performing a meritorious act which exactly fitted their upbringing and devotional needs and they seized it eagerly. But they responded, of course, in their own way. They were not theologians and were bound to react in ways consonant with their own ideas of right and wrong, ideas that did not always respond to those of senior churchmen. The emphasis that Urban had put on charity - love of Christian brothers under the heel of Islam, love of Christ whose land was subject to the Muslim yoke - could not but arouse in their minds analogies with their own kin and their own lords' patrimonies, and remind them of their obligations to avenge injuries to their relatives and lords. And that put the crusade on the level of a vendetta. Their leaders, writing to Urban in September 1098, informed him that 'The Turks, who inflicted much dishonour on Our Lord Jesus Christ, have been taken and killed and we Jerusalemites have avenged the injury to the supreme God Jesus Christ.

A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate vaginally, but sodomising the child is acceptable. If a man does penetrate and damage the child then, he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl will not count as one of his four permanent wives and the man will not be eligible to marry the girl’s sister… It is better for a girl to marry at such a time when she would begin menstruation at her husband’s house, rather than her father’s home. Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in heaven.

Women are inherently crooked? Certainly some Muslim clerics think so—or at least, they do not believe in legal equality for women. Bangladeshi Islamic cleric Mufti Fazlul Haq Amini read the same Koran that Tony Blair found so progressive and yet complained about attempts in his native country to establish equal property rights for women. The problem? That would be “directly against Islam and the holy Koran.”7 And where do Muslims get such ideas? They stem from the overall inferior status of women promulgated in the Koran, which specifically refutes the notion that women have as much basic human dignity as men. To the contrary, Allah says men are superior. When giving regulations for divorce, Allah stipulates that women “have rights similar to those (of men) over them in kindness.” Similar, but not identical, for “men are a degree above them” (2:228). Far from mandating equality, the Koran portrays women as essentially possessions of men. The Koran likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: “Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will” (2:223). And in a tradition Muhammad details the qualities of a good wife, including that “she obeys when instructed” and “the husband is pleased to look at her.”8 The Koran decrees women’s subordination to men in numerous other verses:            •    It declares that a woman’s legal testimony is worth half that of a man: “Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her” (2:282).            •    It allows men to marry up to four wives, and also to have sex with slave girls: “If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice” (4:3).            •    It rules that a son’s inheritance should be twice the size of that of a daughter: “Allah (thus) directs you as regards your children’s (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females” (4:11).            •    It allows for marriage to pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures “shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated” (65:4).

I would clarify regarding these verses as God mentioned in some Swras. In Swra of Al-Nisaa verse 15 says { And those who come to the obscene of your wives, testify four witnesses among you{believers in God}, if they testified keep them in the house till death or the God make a path for them In the Swra Al-Israa verse 32 God says {Do not get close to fornication it is an obscene and a bad path} In the Swra Al-noor verse 2 God says {The adulterers female and male whip each of them a hundred whips and do not mercy them in the religion of God if you are believers in God and the end day let some believers to testify their punishment {2} the male adulterer only comet sexual intercourse with female adulterer or polytheists and the female adulterer only comet sexual intercourse with male adulterer or polytheists and that prohibited for believers{3} and those who accuse chaste woman and do not provide four witnesses whip them eighty whips and do not accept their testimony ever and those are the defiantly disobedient{4} only those who repent after that and reformed God is forgiven and merciful{5} And those who accuse their wives and do not have any witnesses their testifying will be four testimonies by God as he is honest{6} And the fifth {oath and testimony by God} a curse of God on him if he was not honest(7) And the punishment will not occur on her if she gives four testimonies by God that the man is a liar(8) And the fifth (fifth time giving testimony by God) the anger of God will be on her if he was an honest . Dear brothers and sisters in the God’s regulation there is not the punishment by stoning till death {hitting by stone} the punishment for married or unmarried is one hundred lashes although a group of believers in God have to be present and witness their punishment. The clarification has been made by Kamaran Ihsan Salih on 11/07/2017

Koranic polygamy has also come to the United States. In November 2007, a Muslim woman sent a letter to Board of Directors of the Islamic Center of New England complaining that her husband “was able to marry illegally and secretly and without my knowledge three [A]merican [M]uslim women, and because of that my self and my children have suffered and still suffering tremendously.” She laid some of the responsibility at the feet of the leaders of the Islamic Center: “Because of the failure of the Islamic center as well the Imams to prevent such misconduct, I had no choice but to file for divorce.” She threatened to “expose this misconduct to the court and media if I have to, I also hope through this letter that you will make sure that this victimizations [sic] doesn’t happen to any other sisters.”38 This was no isolated case. According to researcher David Rusin, “estimates for the United States typically run into the tens of thousands of polygamous unions.”39 In May 2008 researchers estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 Muslims were living in polygamous arrangements in the United States.40 And Muslim imams don’t seem concerned about U.S. laws forbidding the practice: Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations asserted that a “minority” of Muslims in America were polygamous, and that “Islamic scholars would differ on whether one could do so while living in the United States.”41 He didn’t say anything about the necessity of obeying U.S. laws in this regard. Toronto imam Aly Hindy explained that such laws would have no force for Muslims: “This is in our religion and nobody can force us to do anything against our religion. If the laws of the country conflict with Islamic law, if one goes against the other, then I am going to follow Islamic law, simple as that.”42 The Koran has further gifts for men as well. As we have seen, it stipulates that if a man cannot deal justly with multiples wives, then he should marry only one, or resort to “the captives that your right hands possess”—that is, slave girls (4:3).

Divinely sanctioned wife-beating “There is no basis in Islamic theology to support domestic abuse of any kind,” declared Qanta A. Ahmed, author of In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor’s Journey in the Saudi Kingdom, in May 2009.43 But it all depends on one’s definition of “abuse:” wife-beating exists in all cultures, but only in Islam does it enjoy divine sanction. The Koran tells men to beat their disobedient wives after first warning them and then sending them to sleep in separate beds (4:34)—a punishment that suggests the Koran regards women as sexually insatiable and needing to be kept under control. This is, of course, an extremely controversial verse, so it is worth noting how several translators render the key word here, waidriboohunna:              Pickthall: “and scourge them”              Yusuf Ali: “(and last) beat them (lightly)”              Al-Hilali/Khan: “(and last) beat them (lightly, if it is useful)”              Shakir: “and beat them”              Sher Ali: “and chastise them”              Khalifa: “then you may (as a last alternative) beat them”              Arberry: “and beat them”              Rodwell: “and scourge them”              Sale: “and chastise them”              Asad: “then beat them”              Dawood: “and beat them

Umar b. al-Khattâb contributes the rather resigned insight that men are never as jealous of knowledge as they are of their wives. Salmân indicates the need for teaching and publication in the words, “Knowledge which remains unexpressed is like treasure unused.” The hadîth about the two kinds of knowledge, discussed above, p. 243. Umar on the desirability of the combination of ilm and hilm. Abû d-Dardâ expresses himself on the burden scholars have to bear in these words: “An increase in knowledge means an increase in pain.” Statements by Plato and another sage to the effect that consciousness of not knowing indicates knowledge. An elaboration of this idea is attributed to al-Khalîl: “There are four kinds of men. There are men who know and know that they know. Put questions to them! There are men who know and do not know that they know. They are forgetful. Remind them! There are men who do not know and know that they do not know. They require guidance. Teach them! And there are men who do not know and do not know that they do not know. They are ignorant. Shun them!

Differences between the relatively promiscuous Ache and the relatively monogamous Hiwi also illuminate the cultural variability of human sexual strategies. The different ratios of males to females in these two cultures may be the critical factor in eliciting a different sexual strategy. Among the Ache, there are approximately one and a half women for every man. Among the Hiwi, there are more men than women, although precise numbers are not available. The prevalence of available Ache women creates sexual opportunities for Ache men not experienced by Hiwi men. Ache men seize these opportunities, as evidenced by the high frequency of mate switching and casual affairs. Ache men can pursue a temporary sexual strategy more successfully than Hiwi men can. Hiwi women are better able than Ache women to secure a high investment from men, who must provide resources to attract and retain a mate.19 The cultural shifts witnessed today, such as the hookup culture on college campuses and in large urban settings and the rise of casual sex and online dating apps such as Tinder, probably reflect shifts in mating strategies as a function of a perceived or real sex ratio imbalance. One key cultural variable centers on the presumptive mating system, especially monogamy and polygamy. Some Islamic cultures permit men to marry up to four wives, as specified in the Qur’an. In parts of Utah and Texas in the United States, some fundamentalist Mormon groups place no formal limits on the number of wives a man can marry, and a few marry more than a dozen. Even presumptively monogamous cultures are often effectively polygynous, with some men having multiple mates through serial marriage or affair partners. The more polygynous the culture, the more some men will be inclined to pursue high-risk tactics in an effort to gain status, resources, and mates, either in the current life or in aspirational notions of life after death. Just as mating is a key cause of violence among nonhuman animals from elk to elephant seals, mating and violence are inexorably linked in our own species. Evolved mating strategies are influenced by, and implemented within, these key cultural contexts

Adonis contends, lies in the concept of tawhid, or “oneness,” of Allah. Tawhid connotes not just monotheism, but the exclusion of all forms of thought except Islamic doctrine. It refers more to totality than to unity. As the leading European Islamist Tariq Ramadan explains tawhid, for a right-thinking Muslim, it is literally inconceivable to raise doubts about God. A Muslim, Ramadan explains, might forget Allah, but he cannot doubt Allah. A religion that permits no doubt—unlike Christianity, of which Pope Benedict XVI said that “doubt is the handmaiden of faith”—becomes an all-or-nothing proposition. Either Islam regulates the totality of life and thought, so that no questioning may intrude into its magic circle, or it becomes nothing. Even in the most intimate human setting, the nuclear family, the collectivity consumes the individual: Muslim wives exist to placate

Wives clearly are not to be trusted. A husband must even go so far as to withhold or hide his affection for his wife, because that gives her too much “power.” What a sad thing that is, to deprive a woman you love of even the knowledge that you love her.

Muhammad had married nine more wives after her death, not one had become pregnant.

M10.12 When a husband notices signs of rebelliousness in his wife whether in words as when she answers him coldly when she used to do so politely. or he asks her to come to bed and she refuses, contrary to her usual habit; or whether in acts, as when he finds her averse to him when she was previously kind and cheerful), he warns her in words without keeping from her or hitting her, for it may be that she has an excuse. The warning could be to tell her, "Fear Allah concerning the rights you owe to me," or it could be to explain that rebelliousness nullifies his obligation to support her and give her a turn amongst other wives, or it could be to inform her, "Your obeying me is religiously obligatory". If she commits rebelliousness, he keeps from sleeping (having sex) with her without words, and may hit her, but not in a way that injures her, meaning he may not bruise her, break bones, wound her, or cause blood to flow. It is unlawful to strike another's face. He may hit her whether she is rebellious only once or whether more than once, though a weaker opinion holds that he may

Muhammad said the Mahdi, who would someday come, would be a descendant of one of his wives (Fatimah), and would bear his name, ruling over Arabs. Across the Muslim world today, there is a call for the Islamic Caliphate to be restored, which has been vacant since Turkey abolished the Caliphate in 1924.

Sharia law allows up to four wives, cutting off the hand of a thief, beheading a woman caught in adultery, non-interest bearing ‘Sharia compliant’ mortgages, required clothing for females, etc. It’s a far cry from the English common law, which was developed on Biblical principles.

In 1782 J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, in Letters from an American Farmer wrote: “Whence came all these people? They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes... What, then, is the American, this new man? He is neither a European nor the descendant of a European; hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. . . . The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which has ever appeared.

When Ibn Saud died in 1953, at the age of 77, with one hundred wives, 42 sons, and 1500 princes, Arabia had no significant infrastructure, and was populated by a largely poor and uneducated people. Saud has been succeeded by several descendants over time (with some in-family assassinations), who invested their growing treasure of billions of petrodollars in palaces, Rolls Royces, Boeing 747s and lavish trips abroad, sharing generously with their own family members, but sparingly with the citizens of Saudi Arabia. The House of Saud also used its billions to arm itself against its own citizens, and to pay for military ventures by fellow Muslim nations against Israel.

Islam means “submission.”1 The faith teaches that Muslims must submit to the will of Allah2 and prepare themselves for the final judgment in order to be able to enter paradise.3 Muslims believe that Allah revealed his will through Sharia, which literally means “path” but is generally translated as “Islamic law.”4 Unlike the traditional Western legal system, which is limited to basic civil and criminal elements, Sharia covers everything from religious rituals and private hygiene to principles of conducting business, criminal punishments, and more. Sharia prescribes, for example, how many times a Muslim must pray, how husbands should treat their wives, and what punishments are to be given for different crimes. It mandates flogging for consuming alcohol,5 stoning adulterers to death,6 cutting off a thief’s limbs,7 and executing apostates and blasphemers.8 Many Muslims around the world do not adhere to the jihadist ideology of terrorists. Most Muslims are moderate, peaceful people who, while following their religious traditions and rituals—attending mosques for worship, fasting, witnessing to others—reasonably coexist with followers of other religions. They do not impose their beliefs on others. They have non-Muslim friends, neighbors, and coworkers with whom they socialize on a daily basis. To these Muslims, Islam is a religion of peace. A small but increasingly significant segment of Muslims (some estimate its size as between 10 and 20 percent),9 however, believe in the supremacy of Islam and Sharia law over any other religion or law and feel obligated to force such beliefs on everybody. This

Examining case studies from around the world, Nik learned that failing to disciple the women in a movement had dire consequences in times of persecution. Ahmed said, “We learned that when the persecution becomes severe, and the men are killed or put in prison, our wives would be given over to the mosque or to the tribal leaders. Our children would have no one to teach them the way of Jesus. Within a short time, our movement would cease to exist.” Joe added, “Ripken taught us that women are the key to the movement’s future.

In 1782 J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, in Letters from an American Farmer wrote:            “Whence came all these people? They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes... What, then, is the American, this new man? He is neither a European nor the descendant of a European; hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. . . . The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which has ever appeared.

There was another price too, though again, Aisha had no way of knowing the full extent of it. The sight of her riding into Medina on Safwan’s camel had branded itself into the collective memory of the oasis, and that was the last thing Muhammad needed. In due course, another Quranic revelation dictated that from now on, his wives were to be protected by a thin muslin curtain from the prying eyes of any men not their kin. And since curtains could work only indoors, they would soon shrink into a kind of minicurtain for outdoors: the veil. The Revelation of the Curtain clearly applied only to the Proph et’s wives, but this in itself gave the veil high status. Over the next few decades it would be adopted by women of the new Islamic aristocracy—and would eventually be enforced by Islamic fundamentalists convinced that it should apply to all women. There can be little doubt that this would have outraged Aisha. One can imagine her shocking Muslim conservatives by tearing off her veil in indignation. She had accepted it as a mark of distinction—but as an attempt to force her into the background? The girl so used to high visibility had no intention of being rendered invisible.

Sometimes it takes a terrible tragedy for people to see their need for God. Confronted with terrible evil, Americans have sought divine help before. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln both prayed publicly for the nation. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's prayer for America in the opening salvos of D-day is a beautiful example: ". . . for us at home—fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them—help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice." Regrettably, it is also part of the human condition to quickly forget the need for prayer once we perceive that a threat has passed and "normalcy" has been restored. This makes the words penned in 1632 by Renaissance poet Francis Quarles particularly poignant today: Our God and soldier we alike adore Ev'n at the brink of danger, not before; After deliverance, both alike requited, Our God's forgotten, and our soldiers slighted.

You don’t understand radical Islam. It was founded by one man, a man with self-serving interests, and he spread his power and influence by conquering others. Muhammad claimed to be God’s prophet, therefore, anything he said was considered equal to that of God. Did you know that Muhammad had 23 wives and concubines? Once he wanted to marry the wife of his step-son, something that was forbidden by Islamic law,

To reform a religion, one must at first be able to recognize the follies of that religion, then only one can take necessary steps to discard those flaws. If your son has a drug addiction, you need to first recognize the fact that he is addicted to drugs, then you can take action to send him for rehab. Likewise, in order reform a religion’s historical habit of beating wives and using violence on people from other religions, you must first be conscientious enough to accept the fact, that, that specific religion has a history replete with violence, then you can take measures to mend the cultural mindset of that religion.

We like to speak of Islam and liberation, but we close women behind curtains and walls and call it modesty. What modesty is there in men who cannot control their desires and who project upon women their subjugation fantasies? Every time we tell a woman to not speak or act or appear or breathe, we only affirm our own immodesty. What modesty is there in resisting temptation, not by sanitizing our hearts, but by purging women and turning our sisters and wives into a subjugated colony?

God has given us the night and day as a source of peace and tranquility (28:73), so why do we respond by violence, conflict and hostility? God has given us homes as a source of serenity (16:80), so why do we respond with anxiety, discord, and agony? God has made peace in prayer and piety, so why do we respond with self-righteous enmity? God made our husbands and wives the source of our sakina (30:21) (7:189), and we respond with subjugation, betrayal, and treachery.

The advent of Islamic armies at the gates of India was not a surprise to the frontier kingdoms. They have in the past centuries seen armies of Alexander, the Indo-Greeks, the Kushans, the Scythians, and the Huns, invade the north-western borders of India. What was different this time were the post-war events; the enslavement of wives and children of fighting men[107]; and The desecration of places of worship and religious taxation.

Muhammad’s male followers were disgruntled about the new inheritance laws, they must have been furious when, in a single revolutionary move, he both limited how many wives a man could marry and granted women the right to divorce their husbands.

To love Muhammad is one thing, but to imitate him - to try to be 'like' him - is another. He was the last messenger and the last prophet, so how can we expect to imitate what is by definition unique and unrepeatable? In the first place his virtues are to be imitated, and they were providentially exemplified in the extraordinary variety of human experience through which he passed in his sixty-two years of life. He was an orphan, yet he knew the warmth of parental love through his grandfather's devoted care for him; he was the faithful husband of one wife for many years, and after her death, the tender and considerate husband of many wives; he was the father of children who gave him the greatest joy this world has to offer, and he saw all but one of them die; he had been a shepherd and a merchant when young, and he became a ruler, a statesman, a military commander, and a law-giver; he loved his native city and was driven from it into exile, finally to return home in triumph and set an example of clemency which has no equal in human history. Not only do we know almost everything he did, we know the exact manner in which he did it.

And on Hijacking of Contemporary Islam, And the last of Brethren Kings. Is King Fahd of the Saudi Arabs, Who pretends to be fighting terrorism. With abundant petro-dollars. Allied with vicious imperialism. Oppressing freedoms and scholars. A most subtle mask indeed. As the mighty rich Saudis, Plagued with tribal family greed, Are hijackers of Islam, In fact audacious King Fahd, Recently declared a real sham, As he went on attacking Islam, Using terms of monarchial deceit, Calling it a government by the elite, Devoid of Western-style Democracy, What ignorance, what hypocrisy! A self-serving declaration, For a dictatorial theocracy, So now the Saudis are carving out. Their "Hypocritical Protocol," Bringing down their entire nation. Under Saudis' solid control, With their polygamist breeding wives. Delivering thousands of Saudi lives, As a one-famliy-government body. Of corrupt men with dozens of wives, No longer armed with daggers and knives, Thanks to their loyal imperial powers, Their arms are missiles and radar towers, Whence their grip on political power, While thoughts of democracy and freedom leave them ill- tempered and even sour.

In a review entitled ‘When Religion Makes It Worse,’ Yael Sela and colleagues (Sela et al., 2015) observed that various parts of both the Old Testament, to which Muslims in part adhere or which have influenced Islam, and the Islamic scriptures, therefore, unsurprisingly render it God’s will that you can rape the daughter of your enemy if you invade their land. It would surely elevate the damaged self-esteem of Muslim refugee males to believe that they are part of an invading force. It is indeed a common belief among fundamentalist Muslims that they must colonise the West under Islam (Armstrong, 2001). Leviticus 20: 13 tells believers that in a situation of war, you should kill every male in the opposing tribe and take all the females for yourself. Zechariah 14 is explicit that the enemies of Jerusalem are to be vanquished while their womenfolk are to be raped and enslaved. Judges 21 tells those who fear the Lord to invade the place of their enemies and kill every male as well as every female who is not a virgin. Virgins, however, are to be forcibly married to the soldiers who have slaughtered their families. The Koran 4:3 is quite clear that a man should take multiple wives: ‘Marry of the women, who seem good to you, two or three or four; and if you fear that you cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only) or (the captives) that your right hands possess.’ In other words, you can do what you like with female infidels, with the womenfolk in the country which you have invaded.

Your wives are as a tilth unto you, so approach your tilth when or how you wish” (Quran 2:223) and “When the man invites his wife to his bed she should satisfy him even if she were on the camel’s saddle” (Sahihul-Jami’). It was passages like these that ISIS used to justify the buying, selling, and raping of Yazidi women in Iraq. The women were not sexually enslaved because of their ethnicity but rather treated as the Quran ordains non-Muslim women should be treated.