ddc: Do you even bother to read other threads on this forum? There’s another thread currently discussing exact same thing and it has gone up to 3 pages. I am copying pasting my response from that thread in response to this question. Before I do that I must say that Prophet :saw: once said that there will be Muslims who would take the Ayahs of the Quran and Ahadith, completely out of context and dwell on them.
We all know and accept that Quran cannot be studied without fiqh and understanding. Though not all of us have studied fiqh but at least we can consult some detailed resources before making our judgement and start questioning.
The aya says, Men are maintainers of women … that does not give them any political authority over women. It simply means that it’s their financial obligation to maintain women. Women on the other hand do not have the same obligation. The wealth they acquire is considered discretionary wealth and if they want, they can share it with their husbands or they can spend it on whatever they want to. In fact, in Maliki Mudhab, it is wajib, a fard for a man to provide domestic help for a woman. Although a woman’s work at home taking care of children and household, is given the status of Jihad. This is a Sahih hadith. Prophet :saw: said that a woman gets the same muqaam and rewards of a man in Jihad fee sabil-Allah for doing all the household work. Now how many men get the opportunity of being in a Jihad, while women get this status everyday at home :subhan:
Now when you questioned the rights of women when men are disloyal or vice-versa … do you even know the purpose of this particular aya, why and when it was revealed?
We need to understand what that aya means, which requires the detail and sophistication of fiqh and fuqaha have explained it with precision, that I cannot go into detail here or I’ll take at least 2 more pages and yet I may not be able to do justice with the job since I’m not a religious scholar. There are rules of fiqh that relate to men (when they are unfaithful) and if you really want to learn in detail, I can give you references of written and audio material. So let me first say that it is strictly forbidden to beat a woman or a child or even an animal in Shari’ah. **Basically, **this aya relates to domestic violence. How? That takes us to knowing, when and why the aya came. Prophet :saw: said, “Lunyeyadribu khiyarukum” meaning, **The best of you would never hit a woman. **
This translation that put in bold and underlined about “beat them (lightly)” . This is not actual beating, it is, strike lightly. That too, it was given with “karahiyah” (disliking) as a way of maintaining the self-esteem of Arabs. This verse was revealed when a woman was struck by her husband and the Prophet :saw: said to the woman that I’ll take you and you can strike him the same way, he struck you. And they were actually on the way and this woman was gonna hit her husband in the presence of :saw: because he thought that was fair. At that point this verse was revealed. In other words it conveyed the message, don’t humiliate these men, they are Arabs. And because they have already done so much (let’s not forget that these are Arabs who used to burry their daughters alive, forget about giving them any respect or share in inheritance). Under Islam, they had transformed themselves. Arabs were very proud men (they still are, we all know that) and if :saw: would have humiliated them that way, and he would have lost them. So this aya was revealed as per the psychology of those people. This message was given to the first people.
Now, my purpose of this post was to share some information and not to hurt someone’s ideas or beliefs. Neither did I mean to go beating about the bush by repeated discussions. If anyone is interested to know more about what I mentioned here, please contact me, and I’ll be more than happy to share the source of my information.
And Only God knows the truth. May God forgive us for making any wrong or uninformed claims (intentional or unintentional) and may He :swt: guide us to the right path. Ameen, sum Ameen.
For more responses, pls. check this thread:
http://www.paklinks.com/gs/showthread.php?t=219021&page=2