at the Corner yesterday between Andrew McCarthy and Andrew Stuttaford is significant and revealing—about Stuttaford, and about a certain way of evasive “reasoning” this is very common in liberal society, including among “conservatives.” Below is the entire debate, followed by my comments.
At Least If She’s Here, There’s the Possibility of Filing Charges of Fleeing [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
From the Washington Post today :
Domestic abuse is hardly unique to Muslim immigrant communities; it is a sad fact of life in families of all backgrounds and origins. Yet, according to social workers, Islamic clerics and women’s advocates, women from Muslim-majority cultures face extra pressure to submit to violent husbands and intense social ostracism if they muster the courage to file charges or flee.
A major obstacle to recognizing and fighting abuse, experts said, can be Islam itself. The religion prizes female modesty and fidelity while allowing men to divorce at will and have several wives at once. Many Muslims also believe that men have the right to beat their wives. An often-quoted verse in the Koran says a husband may chastise a disobedient wife, but the phrasing in Arabic is open to several interpretations.
“Many batterers manipulate Islamic law or use its perceived authority to control their wives. A man who has the power to divorce can really twist the knife,” said Mazna Hussain, an attorney for abused women at the Tahirih Justice Center in Falls Church. “Muslim women want to be faithful to their religion, and the idea that you cannot disobey the word of God is very compelling, even if you are in an abusive relationship.”
05/08 07:02 AM
Koran and Wife-Beating [Andy McCarthy]
K-Lo, re your earlier post, Washington Post has to be kidding, with this: “Many Muslims also believe that men have the right to beat their wives. An often-quoted verse in the Koran says a husband may chastise a disobedient wife, but the phrasing in Arabic is open to several interpretations.”
The “oft-quoted” verse, which the Post naturally chooses not to quote, is Sura 4:34. The phrasing is open to varying interpretations, but the credible ones all agree that men should beat a disobedient wife. My Koran, published by the Saudi government, relates the verse as follows (I’ve italicized the key portion):
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 [a footnote indicates this refers to the husband’s “reputation and property” as well as the wife’s “own virtue.”]/ 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).
What the Post calls “chastis[ing]” is a three-tiered system: first admonish, then deny affection, and, if all else fails, resort to physical coercion. As far as that physical coercion goes, the varying interpretations essentially range from scourge to beat (lightly); it is not, as the Post misleadingly implies, to beat or not to beat.
Many verses in the Koran are very troubling. But we do ourselves and moderate Muslim reformers no favors by pretending those verses are not there, or that they say something different from what they say. Doing that effectively cedes authority to the fundamentalists since only they are willing to abide by what the scriptures actually say. Better to confront the truth and deal with it, not whitewash it. There will be no reformation absent a realistic acknowledgment that reform is needed.
05/08 09:24 AM
Quoting Verses From The Koran [Andrew Stuttaford]
Andy, we’ve been over this ground before, but I still think it’s worth making this point again. You are quite right that (a) there are some horrifying verses in the Koran, and that (b) they are too often passed over or excused (most notably by people such as Karen Armstrong, in my view one of the more disreputable apologists for religious fanaticism to come scurrying into view in recent years) by commentators who should, and often do, know better. Nevertheless, it’s worth remembering that there’s plenty of savagery to be found in the Old Testament too. What really matters is not what was said or written back in the Dark Ages (or, in the case of the Bible, even earlier), but how those words are interpreted now, if, indeed, at all.
05/08 11:52 AM
Re: Quoting Verses From The Koran [Andy McCarthy]
Yes, Andrew. And I’ll address that, too, the minute we have a global terror campaign motivated by an interpretation of the Old Testament.
05/08 12:11 PM
Quoting the Koran [Andrew Stuttaford]
Andy, you’re still not addressing the essential point (one made in a slightly different way by Ayaan Hirsi Ali incidentally, at the CATO lunch from which I have just returned) which is that it is possible to make a distinction between a doctrine and its followers. It is not enough, by itself, to quote from some ancient text, and then use that as conclusive evidence as to the state of that religion in modern times. What you have to look at is how that text is interpreted today by those who still see it as sacred. The tragedy for us, and, quite frankly, even more so for many Muslims, is that too many of their co-religionists persist in viewing the writings of Mohammed in a way that fails to take account of the 1,400 years that have elapsed since they were transcribed.
As to what the Bible may or may not have inspired, even the quickest of glances at the historical record will show that, in the past, it has indeed inspired great evil (as well as much good). That the consequences tended to be felt locally, rather than globally, merely reflected the technological realities of those times. Times change, however, and so, effectively, did the religion, even if its holy writ did not. There’s a lesson there.
05/08 02:59 PM
Re: Quoting the Koran [Andy McCarthy]
Andrew, I am not missing your point. The problem is that I basically said, “Two plus two equals four,” and you replied, “Yes, Andy, but you forget that Springfield is the capital of Illinois.” What you said was true but irrelevant to the points I was making, which were (a) that the Washington Post, while purporting to explain the verse in question, had opted not to quote it and then described it in a misleading fashion, and (b) that the best hope of empowering moderate Muslims is to deal honestly with the text as it is, not bleach out the hair-raising stuff. I never came close to suggesting either that only Islam has troublesome scriptures or that it did not matter what modern believers made of the scriptures, so your raising these issues was irrelevant to what I was getting at. But as long as you brought it up, I thought it was worth noting that no other religious tradition extant—regardless of what its scriptures say or what its believers take them to mean—is inspiring savagery on a global scale.
Your follow-up post, moreover, is not helping your argument (whoever you may be arguing with). First, Muslims do not believe, as you suggest, that the Koran sets forth the “writings of Mohammed.” They believe the utterances recorded in the Koran are the verbatim word of Allah. This underscores the challenge for reformers. Being eternal, infinite and transcendent, God’s views are not subject to change based on “1,400 years that have elapsed since they were transcribed”; however interesting that history may be to us, it’s a fair bet that God’s views do not change as we evolve. Even if they did, moreover, humans who presume to explain how God got it wrong—the unfortunate position reformers find themselves in as far as the faithful are concerned—have a tough row to hoe.
Second, I think you are missing the truly important lesson in your closing rumination about how times change and people’s beliefs evolve even though their scriptures remain the same. I cooked something on the stove this morning—I didn’t need to live in the dark and cold for generations, nor did I need to rub two sticks together. I relied on the learning of prior generations and peoples—some with no religious traditions, some with traditions different from mine, but all with experience from which I could draw. We don’t recreate the wheel with every new generation and belief system. The knowledge that caused the views and behavior of the Biblical believers you mention to evolve over time has been equally available to Muslims—who, after all, are also People of the Book. If your point is that we should give Islam a few thousand more years because Jews had that long to become what they are today, I’m not buying.
05/08 05:08 PM
The first question that arises after reading this debate is: did Stuttaford ever acknowledge McCarthy’s point that the
misrepresented the truth when it said that the Koran says that men can “chastise” their wives? Did he finally acknowledge that the way the Koran is “interpreted” today is exactly the way it’s been “interpreted” all along—i.e., that a man’s behavior toward a difficult wife shall consist of admonishment, then denial of affection, then physical coercion? No, he did not acknowledge these things, since, as of Wednesday morning, Stuttaford has made no further replies to McCarthy’s last post made yesterday afternoon.
Here then is what Stuttaford actually did in this discussion. In response to McCarthy’s statement that the Koran commands that a man use physical coercion against his wife, Stuttaford rushed to assert some wide-open, airy abstraction that we must understand the Koran as it is “interpreted” today, not as it was “interpreted” in the 7th century. But he never acknowledged the reality that the way it is in fact “interpreted” today is the same as it was “interpreted” in the 7th century. And his wide-open airy abstraction about the Koran enabled him keep ignoring the actual fact that the Washington Post misrepresented the Koran and misrepresented actual authoritative Muslim belief.
To put it differently: Stuttaford rejected McCarthy’s definitive statement about the Koran by saying that we must understand how the Koran is “interpreted” today, BUT HE HIMSELF NEVER ASKED HOW IT IS INTERPRETED TODAY. What does this indicate about Stuttaford? It indicates that he has no actual interest in what the doctrines of Islam actually are. He just wants to keep throwing out these vague relativistic slogans that would preclude any clear statements about the doctrines of Islam from ever being made. Stuttaford’s goal vis a vis Islam is not to know and understand. His goal is to obfuscate.
Chris L. writes:
N. writes: