MORGANTOWN, W.Va. When dealing with a
“disobedient wife,” a Muslim man has a number of
options. First, he should remind her of "the
importance of following the instructions of the
husband in Islam.“If that doesn’t work, he can”leave the wife’s bed.“Finally, he may”beat“her, though it must be without”hurting, breaking
a bone, leaving blue or black marks on the body
and avoiding hitting the face, at any cost."

Such appalling recommendations, drawn from the
book “Woman in the Shade of Islam” by Saudi
scholar Abdul Rahman al-Sheha, are inspired by as
authoritative a source as any Muslim could hope
to find: a literal reading of the 34^th verse of
the fourth chapter of the Koran, An-Nisa , or
Women. "[A]nd (as to) those on whose part you
fear desertion, admonish them and leave them
alone in the sleeping-places and beat them,"
reads one widely accepted translation.

The notion of using physical punishment as a
“disciplinary action,” as Sheha suggests,
especially for “controlling or mastering women”
or others who “enjoy being beaten,” is common
throughout the Muslim world. Indeed, I first
encountered Sheha’s work at my Morgantown mosque,
where a Muslim student group handed it out to
male worshipers after Friday prayers one day a
few years ago.

Verse 4:34 retains a strong following, even among
many who say that women must be treated as equals
under Islam. Indeed, Muslim scholars and leaders
have long been doing what I call “the 4:34 dance”
— they reject outright violence against women
but accept a level of aggression that fits
contemporary definitions of domestic violence.

Western leaders, including British Prime Minister
Tony Blair and Italian Prime Minister Romano
Prodi, have recently focused on Muslim women’s
veils as an obstacle to integration in the West.
But to me, it is 4:34 that poses the much deeper
challenge of integration. How the Muslim world
interprets this passage will reveal whether Islam
can be compatible with life in the 21^st century.
As Hadayai Majeed, an African American Muslim who
had opened a shelter in Atlanta to serve Muslim
women, put it, "If it’s okay for me to be a
savage in my home, it’s okay for me to be a
savage in the world."

Not long after I picked up the free Saudi book,
Mahmoud Shalash, an imam from Lexington, Ky.,
stood at the pulpit of my mosque and offered
marital advice to the 100 or so men sitting
before him. He repeated the three-step plan, with
“beat them” as his final suggestion. Upstairs, in
the women’s balcony, sat a Muslim friend who had
recently left her husband, who she said had
abused her; her spouse sat among the men in the
main hall.

At the sermon’s end, I approached Shalash. "This
is America,“I protested.”How can you tell men
to beat their wives?“”They should beat them lightly,“he explained.”It’s in the Koran."

He was doing the dance.

Born into a conservative Muslim family that
emigrated from Hyderabad, India, to West
Virginia, I have seen many female relatives in
India cloak themselves head to toe in black
burqas and abandon their education and careers
for marriage. But the Islam I knew was a gentle
one. I was never taught that a man could — or
should — physically discipline his wife. Abusing
anyone, I was told, violated Islamic tenets
against zulm , or cruelty. My family adhered to
the ninth chapter of the Koran, which says that
men and women "are friends and protectors of one
another."

However, the kidnapping and killing of my friend
and colleague Daniel Pearl in 2002 forced me to
confront the link between literalist
interpretations of the Koran that sanction
violence in the world and those that sanction
violence against women. For critics of Islam,
4:34 is the smoking gun that proves that Islam is
misogynistic and intrinsically violent. Read
literally, it is as troubling as Koranic verses
such as At-Tauba (“The Repentance”) 9:5, which
states that Muslims should "slay the pagans
wherever ye find them“or Al-Mâ’idah (”The Table
Spread with Food“) 5:51, which reads,”Take not
the Jews and Christians as friends."

Although Islamic historians agree that the
prophet Muhammad never hit a woman, it is also
clear that Muslim communities face a domestic
violence problem. A 2003 study of 216 Pakistani
women found that 97 percent had experienced such
abuse; almost half of them reported being victims
of nonconsensual sex. Earlier this year, the
state-run General Union of Syrian Women released
a report showing that one in four married Syrian
women is the victim of domestic violence.

Much of the problem is the 4:34 dance, which
encourages this violence while producing
interpretations that range from comical to
shocking. A Muslim man in upstate New York, for
instance, told his wife that the Koran allowed
him to beat her with a “wet noodle.” The host of
a Saudi TV show displayed a pool cue as a
disciplinary tool.

Modern debates over 4:34 inevitably hark back to
a still widely used 1930 translation of the Koran
by British Muslim Marmaduke Pickthall, who
determined the verse to mean that, as a last
resort, men can “scourge” their wives. A 1934
translation of the Koran, by Indian Muslim
scholar A. Yusuf Ali, inserted a parenthetical
qualifier: Men could “Beat them (lightly).”

By the 1970s, Saudi Arabia, with its
ultra-traditionalist Wahhabi ideology, was
providing the translations. Fueled by oil money,
the kingdom sent its Korans to mosques and
religious schools worldwide. A Koran available at
my local mosque, published in 1985 by the Saudi
government, adds yet another qualifier: "Beat
them (lightly, if it is useful)."

Today, the Islamic Society of North America and
popular Muslim Internet mailing lists such as
SisNet and IslamIstheTruth rely on an analysis
from “Gender Equity in Islam,” a 1995 book by
Jamal Badawi, director of the Islamic Information
Foundation in Canada. Badawi tries to take a
stand against domestic violence, but like others
doing the 4:34 dance, he leaves room for physical
discipline. If a wife "persists in deliberate
mistreatment and expresses contempt of her
husband and disregard for her marital
obligations,“the husband”may resort to another
measure that may save the marriage . . . more
accurately described as a gentle tap on the
body,“he writes.”[B]ut never on the face," he
adds, "making it more of a symbolic measure than
a punitive one."

As long as the beating of women is acceptable in
Islam, the problem of suicide bombers, jihadists
and others who espouse violence will not go away;
to me, they form part of a continuum. When 4:34
came into being in the 7^th century, its
pronouncements toward women were revolutionary,
given that women were considered little more than
chattel at the time. But 1,400 years later, the
world is a different place and so, too, must our
interpretations be different, retaining the
progressive spirit of that verse.

Domestic violence is prevalent today in
non-Muslim communities as well, but the apparent
religious sanction in Islam makes the challenge
especially difficult. Some people seem to
understand this and are beginning to push back
against the traditionalists. However, their
efforts are concentrated in the West, and their
impact remains small.

In his recent book “No god but God,” Reza Aslan,
an Islam scholar at the University of Southern
California, dared to assert that "misogynistic
interpretation" has dogged 4:34 because Koranic
commentary "has been the exclusive domain of
Muslim men." An Iranian American scholar recently
published a new 4:34 translation stating that the
“beating” step means "go to bed with them (when
they are willing)."

Meanwhile, shelters created for Muslim women in
Chicago and New York have begun to preach zero
tolerance regarding the “disciplining” of women — a position that should be universal by now.
And some Muslim men appear to grasp the gravity
of this issue. In Northern Virginia, for
instance, an imam organized a group called Muslim
Men Against Domestic Violence — though it still
endorses the “tapping” of a wife as a “friendly”
reminder, an organizer said.

Yet even these small advances, if we can call
them such, face an uphill battle against the
Saudi oil money propagating literalist
interpretations of the Koran here in the United
States and worldwide.

Last October, I listened to an online audio
sermon by an American Muslim preacher, Sheik
Yusuf Estes, who was scheduled to speak at West
Virginia University as a guest of the Muslim
Student Association. He soon moved to the subject
of disobedient wives, and his recommendations
mirrored the literal reading of 4:34. First,
“tell them.” Second, “leave the bed.” Finally:
"Roll up a newspaper and give her a crack. Or
take a yardstick, something like this, and you
can hit."

When I telephoned Estes later to ask about the
sermon, he said that he had been trying to limit
how and when men could hit their wives. He
realized that he had to revisit the issue, he
told me, when some Canadian Muslim men asked him
if they could use the Sunday newspaper to give
their wives “a crack.”

Yet even those doing the 4:34 dance seem to
realize that there’s a problem. When I went back
to listen to the audio clip later, the offensive
language had been removed. And when I asked Estes
if he had ever rolled up a newspaper to give his
own wife a crack, he responded without hesitation.

“I’m married to a woman from Texas,” he said. "Do
you know what she would do to me?"