German judge invokes Qur’an to deny abused wife a divorce
A German judge who refused a Moroccan woman a fast-track divorce on the grounds that domestic violence was acceptable according to the Qur’an has been removed from the case following a nationwide outcry.
The judge, Christa Datz-Winter, said the German woman of Moroccan descent would not be granted a divorce because she and her husband 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,” according to a statement she wrote that was issued by a Frankfurt court. “That’s what the claimant had to reckon with when she married the defendant.”The 26-year-old mother of two had been repeatedly beaten and threatened with death by her husband.
When the woman protested against the judge’s decision, Ms Datz-Winter invoked the Qur’an to support her argument. In the court she read from verse 34 of Sura four of the Qur’an, An-Nisa (Women), in which men are told to hit their wives as a final stage in dealing with disobedience. The verse reads: “… as to those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them and leave them alone in the sleeping places and beat them”.
That judge should lose her job. And incidentally, there is (as always) a wide range of interpretations and thinking about this part of the Quran.
Update: NYT story on alternate interpretation, by which a rebellious woman should be spurned rather than beaten as usually interpreted.
