The National Review Online’s editor, Kathryn Jean Lopez, mentioned this commentary yesterday. It is a must read by a Muslim, Mona Eltahawy, about wife beating and a German judge’s ruling that sharia law takes precedent over her nation’s law on the subject*:
To appreciate the absurdity of what it can mean to be a Muslim woman today you need a few fools.
Enter stage right: German judge Christa Datz-Winter, whose claim to infamy was her refusal to grant a fast-track divorce to a German Muslim woman who had complained that her husband beat her. The judge said both partners came from a “Moroccan cultural environment in which it is not uncommon for a man to exert a right of corporal punishment over his wife,” and she cited passages in the Qu’ran that she said sanction physical abuse.
How cruelly ironic for the unfortunate wife who tried to make the most of western laws that are always waved in the face of Muslims as the pinnacle of civilized behaviour if only we would learn from them. Here was a Muslim woman who really did need to be saved from an abusive husband – not the ‘Evil Muslim Man’ imagined as lurking in all our closets, but the real thing – a brutal man who beat his wife. Right at the moment when she pushed to take advantage of those laws, the Muslim woman who really did need to be saved was kicked back – by a woman no less – into the arms of the very misogyny that the West is always trying to save us from.
So we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.
Judge Datz-Winter might be the most maligned multiculturalist du jour, but in time we will celebrate her for so bluntly – if unintentionally – setting on fire the house of cards that so many of my fellow Muslims struggle to keep up around women’s rights.
One need only type ‘Islam + wife + beating’ as a search item on YouTube to learn that Judge Datz-Winter’s idiocy finds plenty of ugly echo in the chorus of fools otherwise known as our zealous imams and scholars trying to decide exactly how much harm to a woman their God allows. These unfortunately all-too real and evil men point to the very same passages in the Qu’ran that the judge used to turn down the fast-track divorce.
But here’s the difference – Judge Datz-Winter was removed from the case and could face disciplinary action. By contrast, who is disciplining our imams and scholars? Unless we – Muslims – push and clamour for the removal of the men who advocate wife beating in the name of the Qu’ran then to remain a Muslim woman today would require nothing short of mental gymnastics.
* Editor’s note: corrected introduction.