Quran 4:34: 5 facts about the verse on striking wives

The verse opens by saying that men are qawwāmūn in relation to women, “because of what they spend from their wealth.” The root carries the sense of standing firm in someone’s support and upkeep. Al-Tabari took it to mean that the husband is charged with the care and oversight of the household, and many modern translators render it “protectors and maintainers.” The reason the verse gives is the financial duty of the husband, which is worth noticing before reading any claim of superiority into it.^[1]

It then speaks of women from whom nushūz is feared, a word the commentators took to mean ill will or disloyalty within the marriage. The same word is used of husbands in 4:128. Three steps follow: advise them, leave them in the bed, and iḍribūhunna, which is usually translated “strike them.” The next verse, 4:35, says that if a rift is feared, an arbiter from his family and one from hers should be sent, and that God will bring reconciliation if both wish it.^[1]

Ismail al Faruqi connects the verse’s reason, that men spend from their wealth, to the wider law of support. A woman is maintained by her nearest male relative before marriage and by her husband within it, and after a divorce the former husband must support her while she is pregnant or nursing; because she is provided for in this way, he explains, she inherits half the share of a man.^[2]

The classical commentators and jurists read the three steps as a sequence. Advice comes first, withdrawal from the bed second, and the third only if the first two have failed. The verse itself closes the door behind them: “if they obey you, seek no way against them.” Once the cause is gone, every one of the steps ends.^[1]

The act was also bounded. Ibn Abbas is reported to have said that, if it is done, it is with a tooth-stick (siwāk), a symbolic touch that leaves no mark.^[3] In the Farewell Sermon the Prophet said that, for a clear wrong, husbands may strike in a manner that is not severe (ghayr mubarriḥ).^[4] He also forbade striking the face.^[5] The jurists drew from these texts a ban on any blow that injures, bruises or breaks. A critic will answer that any permission to strike is wrong, however small. That objection is taken up in the entries that follow, which show that the sources treat the permission as the lowest rung and abstention as the better course.

Aisha said that the Prophet never struck anything with his hand, neither a woman nor a servant, except when fighting in the way of God.^[6] The practice of the one to whom the verse was revealed is therefore the first commentary on it, and it was a practice of restraint.

Critics cite one report against this record. A’isha followed the Prophet at night to the cemetery of al-Baqi, hurried home ahead of him and pretended to sleep. When he asked why she was out of breath and she told him, she said that he gave her a nudge on the chest which she felt, and then explained that Gabriel had commanded him to pray for the people buried there.^[7] The report describes a push of reproach in a moment of suspicion, which A’isha herself recounted while explaining why he had gone out. It records no beating, and it sits beside her own testimony that he never struck a woman.^[6]

Abu Dawud reports that when he had forbidden the beating of women, Umar came to him and said that the women had grown bold toward their husbands, and he gave permission to strike. Many women then visited the household of the Prophet complaining of their husbands, and he said of those men: “Those are not the best of you.”^[8] He also said: “The best of you is the best to his wives, and I am the best of you to my wives.”^[9] The Quran itself commands living with wives in kindness (4:19). Several jurists drew from these reports that the husband who holds back is the one the Prophet praised, and that the permission in the verse describes what is lawful and not what is recommended.

The Arabic root ḍ-r-b has many meanings, including to strike, to travel, to give an example and to cast or draw over. The Quran uses it of striking in 8:12, of travelling in the land in 4:101, of coining a parable in 14:24, and of women drawing their head-coverings over their chests in 24:31. Some modern scholars, among them the translator Laleh Bakhtiar, therefore read 4:34 as “go away from them,” which fits the sequence of advice and then leaving the bed.^[10]

The strongest objection to that reading is that every classical commentator understood the word as striking, and that in other places where the verb takes a direct object with no preposition, as here, it has that sense. Those who accept the classical reading reply in two ways. They point to the limits described above, which reduce the act to a gesture of disapproval. And they note that the dispute shows how little the verse can bear as a licence for violence: whichever meaning is chosen, the tradition closes the door on harm.

Many contemporary scholars hold that domestic violence is a crime and that the steps of the verse are to be read in the light of the Prophet’s practice and the prohibition of harm: “No harm and no reciprocating harm.”^[11] The Quran says the same of the marriage itself: a husband may not keep a wife in order to harm her (2:231).

The tradition also gave the wife a remedy. Maliki jurists in particular allowed a judge to end a marriage on the ground of harm (ḍarar), and Muslim women’s courts and counsellors in many countries treat a husband’s violence as grounds for divorce. Some scholars go further and hold that a state may forbid the third step outright, since the legal principle of avoiding harm outweighs a permission the Prophet himself never used. Others reply that the text must be allowed to stand as it is, and that abuse in Muslim homes reflects a failure to obey the limits it sets. All of these positions share one conclusion: a husband who injures his wife has acted against the verse and not under it.