When a father says “this is Islam”: 7 rules checked against the sources

The Quran tells husbands to “live with them in kindness” (4:19) and says that among God’s signs is that he placed between spouses “affection and mercy” (30:21).^[1] ʿĀʾisha reported that the Messenger of God ﷺ ﷺ never beat anyone with his hand, neither a woman nor a servant, except when fighting in God’s cause.^[2] He is also reported to have said that the best of the believers is the best to his wives, and that he was the best to his.^[3]

Verse 4:34 is the verse a husband usually cites, and it is a matter of long debate among scholars: what the word translated “strike” means, in what order the steps come, and how far the jurists limited it. That debate is set out in the article on 4:34. It does not reach the cases such accounts describe, which are a hot plate thrown in a wife’s face, beatings in anger and being chased with a knife. No jurist, classical or modern, gives a husband those.

Verdict: no. The sources set the example against it, and the single verse in dispute does not cover what is described.

The Prophet ﷺ said that a woman who has been married before must not be married until she is consulted, and a virgin must not be married until her permission is asked. When the people asked how they would know her permission, he said that her silence is her permission.^[4]

In another report, Khansāʾ bint Khidhām said that her father had married her against her wishes. She went to the Messenger of God ﷺ, and he declared the marriage invalid.^[5] A father may propose and advise, and in many families that is what the custom of arranged introductions means. The sources do not allow him to force a daughter, and a marriage made against her will can be annulled.

It is worth saying what a father may do. He may introduce a suitable man, give his opinion, and refuse to hand over a daughter to someone he judges unfit, and many classical jurists gave a guardian a role in the contract. The guardian’s role is to protect the woman. The reports above show that the role does not extend to overriding her.

The pressure described in some accounts, where an engagement is announced and a daughter’s refusal is ignored, belongs to custom. Verdict: no. Consent is a condition of the marriage.

No verse or report gives a father the power to choose a grown daughter’s course of study. The Quran asks, “Are those who know equal to those who do not know?” (39:9) and promises that God will raise “those who were given knowledge” in rank (58:11).^[6] Women among the Companions were teachers of the community, and ʿĀʾisha is the most famous of them.

The Quran also commands good treatment of parents and forbids even saying “uff” to them (17:23).^[7] A daughter owes her parents kindness, a hearing and respect. Scholars differ on how far obedience goes in matters that are neither required nor forbidden, and many say that a parent’s wish carries weight in those. None of them says that a parent may order a life. A father who wished that he had studied pharmacy and orders his daughter into it is acting on his own history. The tradition does not stand behind it.

The reverse also holds. A daughter who disagrees with her father does not become disobedient by choosing her own course, and a father who tells her that God will be angry with her for it has added to the religion. The sources ask her to speak gently, to listen, and to keep the bond, and they leave the decision about her own life to her.

Verdict: custom, with a real duty of kindness that stops short of command. The father’s authority is moral, and a daughter can honour it and still choose.

The Quran forbids mockery between believers, and adds, “do not insult one another and do not call each other by offensive nicknames” (49:11).^[8] The Prophet ﷺ is reported to have said that the believer does not insult the honour of others, nor curse, nor speak obscenely, nor is he foul-mouthed.^[9]

A father who calls his daughter fat in front of her mother, mocks her clothes, or gives her a contemptuous nickname breaks those verses and that report. So does a husband who turns terms of endearment into a joke at his wife’s expense. The classical books of manners, which the Muslim tradition calls adab, give long chapters to the tongue as a source of sin.

Verdict: forbidden. This is among the clearest of the seven.

In many immigrant communities, as in many others, a family’s honour is held to rise or fall with a daughter’s reputation. The Quran says otherwise: “no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another” (6:164).^[10] A person answers for what she herself has done.

The Prophet ﷺ said that whoever screens a Muslim, God will screen him on the Day of Resurrection.^[11] The law of Islam forbids sexual relations outside marriage and also hedges any accusation with a strict standard of proof, and the punishments belong to a court and not to a parent or a congregation. A teenager exposed and beaten in front of a mosque, because he or she spoke to the other sex, has been treated in a way the sources do not provide.

Some of the rules the community was enforcing, such as limits on private mixing, have a basis in the sources and scholars differ on their reach. The method was the problem. Verdict: the rule may have a basis, and the shaming and the beating have none.

Verse 33:53, which speaks of speaking to the Prophet’s wives from behind a screen, is addressed to the Prophet’s household.^[12] The general rule for women in the Quran is the guarding of the gaze and of adornment, and a covering of the chest (24:31, 33:59), and scholars differ on how far the rules extend: that is the subject of the article on hijab. No text requires a woman to be sent to the kitchen and told to keep silent when a carpet-layer comes to the house.

On the mosque the report is direct. The Prophet ﷺ said, “Do not stop Allah’s women-slaves from going to Allah’s mosques.” A wife of ʿUmar prayed fajr and ʿishāʾ in the mosque although ʿUmar disliked it, and when she was asked why she kept going she said that nothing stopped him from forbidding her but that report.^[13] A mosque that gives women a loud, dirty room behind a wall, and rejects their petitions for a better one, is working against that report.

Verdict: mixed. Modesty rules are real and are argued over, while the hiding of women in a household and the poor treatment of women in a mosque are customs that the sources do not support.

Some fathers add rants about Jews, denials of the Holocaust and tales that the attacks of 11 September were staged, and they say it is part of being a Muslim. It is not. The Quran says, “do not let the hatred of a people prevent you from being just” (5:8), says that God does not forbid kindness and justice toward those who do not fight you over religion (60:8), and tells the believer, “do not pursue that of which you have no knowledge” (17:36).^[14]

The Prophet ﷺ stood for the funeral of a Jew, and when he was told that it was a Jew, he said, “Is it not a living being?”^[15] The joke that Jews were once dogs, which circulates in some households, has no basis in the Quran. The verses on apes concern a group who broke the Sabbath, and the article on those verses sets out what the sources do and do not say.

The history of Banu Qurayza is also read and argued over, in its own article. It does not support hatred of a people today. Verdict: no. A Muslim who hates a people and spreads stories he cannot prove disobeys the verses he claims.