"Men are the Protectors of Women": American Muslim Negotiations of Domestic Violence, Marriage, and Feminism

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m Chapter 10

“Men are the Protectors of Women”: Negotiating Marriage, Feminism, and

(Islamic) Law in American Muslim Efforts against Domestic Violence

Juliane Hammer

Men are qawwamun (protectors/maintainers) in relation to women, according to what God has favored some over others and according to what they spend from their wealth. Righteous women are qanitat (obedient), guarding the unseen according to what God had guarded. Those (women) whose nushuz (disobedience) you fear, admonish them, and abandon them in their beds, and strike them. If they obey you, do not pursue a strategy against them. Indeed, God is Exalted, Great.

Qur’an 4: 34 (transl. Kecia Ali1)

Does the concept of qiwamah have positive elements that should be retained? What does protection mean, where does hierarchy come in, how does control fit in, how can care come in? Should the link affirmed by classical jurists between maintenance and obedience be refined or broken?

Ziba Mir-Hosseini and Zainah Anwar2

Feminism for me raises profound questions and gives often tentative answers. Feminism is “both an analytical and a politically prescriptive project” (Mahmood 2005: 10) placing responsibility for the production and application of knowledge on those who situate themselves as part of the feminist project. Saba Mahmood has described the relationship between the analytical and the prescriptive dimensions of the feminist project as in constant tension, in part because they have to assume a particular concept of freedom, the freedom to make choices and thus have agency. If the status of women in a given culture is subordinated or marginalized, it follows that this status needs to be changed. Mahmood criticizes this theoretical posture of much feminist literature, especially on Muslim women and cautions that not resisting the status quo of women’s oppression can and should also be read as the exercise of women’s agency (Mahmood, 2005: 10).

1 Ali 2009. The Arabic words qawwamun, qanitat, and nushuz were left in the original by Ali, who argued that any translation would also be an interpretation.

2 Mir-Hosseini and Anwar 2012.



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Feminism, Law, and Religion238

In this chapter, I want to connect questions about women’s role in marriage, religiously framed efforts against domestic violence (DV), and the feminist critique of patriarchy by linking the interpretation of Qur’anic passages, examples of grassroots activism, and advocacy against domestic violence in American Muslim communities. In doing so, I relate to the terms in the title of this volume (law, religion, and feminism) by critically approaching secular feminist frameworks; by thinking of law both in terms of Islamic law and secular American laws; and by linking feminism and law through considerations of religion, here Islam, as central to the self-understanding, practice, and values of American Muslim women and men.

This chapter is an argument in progress, and one that reflects my own experience of tensions between my religious commitments, my values and goals as an activist, and my feminist assumptions about gender equality. I have found it necessary to challenge my assumptions, especially in my research and work regarding domestic violence in Muslim communities. Here I want to argue that in order to be effective as activists, those advocating on behalf of Muslim victims and survivors of domestic violence may not be able to insist on feminist frameworks for gender equality in marriage, and, equally important, Muslims may not have any investment in such frameworks. This is, however, not only a question of realistic expectation and impact, but extends to Mahmood’s conceptual challenge to feminist expectations of resistance to patriarchy more generally. In this chapter, I connect two episodes from my ethnographic research to Muslim feminist scholarship on marriage, family, and domestic violence to argue that in researching Muslim grassroots efforts against domestic violence, we (read I) need to challenge deep-seated assumptions about equality, marriage, and patriarchy in order to read and analyze those efforts without patronizing and belittling grassroots activists and leaders whose frameworks significantly differ from my (our) own. In the process, I have already changed my own assumptions and gained a newfound appreciation for alternative perspectives on marriage, religion, and equality.

Peaceful Families—American Muslim Efforts against Domestic Violence

When I first started researching domestic violence3 (“DV”) in Muslim communities and was looking for specifically Muslim (that is, religiously framed) efforts against DV, I was humbled as well as surprised. I continue to experience this sense of humility: every time I interview a Muslim DV activist; every time I attend a fundraiser or training session; every time I visit one of the many organizations,

3 I use the term domestic violence here for practical ease and not because I am unaware of the debates about the power of terminology. I have found that many Muslim DV advocates and activists prefer the term “domestic violence,” but will also use “domestic abuse.” They are less likely to embrace terms like “intimate partner violence” and “violence against women” because both are seen as limiting either in practical or ideological terms.



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“Men are the Protectors of Women” 239

large and small, that have made it their goal to eradicate domestic abuse in Muslim communities. My research is focused on the various organizations, projects, and initiatives that approach the issue of domestic violence from a range of different angles. It also explores who the people are, Muslim women and men that organize, initiate, fundraise, and invest much of their time and effort in this particular and pressing issue. What they have in common is the insistence that while domestic violence is a problem for all communities and society as a whole, it is, in their view, possible to develop specifically Islamic solutions and remedies to that problem. In other words, Islam does not cause or condone domestic violence; rather, this religious tradition with its textual sources and structures of interpretation can prove to be a resource against domestic violence. This insistence is important, because mainstream domestic violence services and approaches have typically treated religion(s) as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. And it comes as no surprise that in American public discourse the purported connection between women’s abuse, women’s oppression, and religious patriarchy is almost always taken for granted in domestic violence situations in Muslim communities. The stereotype of the violent and oppressive Muslim (terrorist) men is almost inevitably complemented by that of the oppressed and silenced Muslim woman.4

Traceable efforts against domestic violence in American Muslim communities reach back at least to the early 1990s.5 While less formal efforts such as private community discussions and providing shelter for abused women have existed for longer, later efforts involved the founding of specialized organizations to raise awareness of the issue of domestic violence in Muslim communities and to start providing more services to abused women (and men). These institutionalized efforts exist in organizations such as the Peaceful Families Project, Project Sakinah, Turning Point, Muslimat al-Nisaa, the Domestic Harmony Foundation, FAITH, and the Islamic Social Services Association,6 and many others that focus their work in several distinct areas: raising awareness of domestic violence in Muslim communities; awareness work and “cultural sensitivity” training for law enforcement, mainstream service providers, and legal advocates; and the provision

4 For a discussion of the gendered nature of Islamophobia, see Hammer 2012b, as well as classics in this field including Zine 2002, Ahmed 1992, and Abu-Lughod 2002.

5 Traceable is an appropriate term here because organizations and initiatives with a focus on pressing social and political issues in society, such as domestic violence, are typically born out of a need to act immediately. Thus, such organizations and initiatives often have very little documentation of their own history or the time to reflect on their own trajectory. Several interviewed advocates pointed out that the interview had been the first opportunity to reflect on such questions.

6 The websites for such organizations include Peaceful Families Project (www.peacefulfamilies.org), Project Sakinah (www.projectsakinah.org), Turning Point for Women and Families (www.tpny.org), Muslimat al-Nisaa (www.mnisaa.org), the Domestic Harmony Foundation (www.dhfny.org), the Islamic Social Services Association (www.issausa.org), and FAITH (Foundation for Appropriate and Immediate Temporary Help www.faithus.org).



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of services to victims and survivors of domestic violence. In addition, larger Muslim community organizations, foremost among them the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), have hosted and organized initiatives to raise awareness of domestic violence and to support DV-focused organizations and community initiatives. In this chapter I focus on organizations and initiatives that have all chosen to employ a religious framework for their efforts, rather than local or national secular services provided by mainstream domestic violence advocates. They center their efforts on the search for textual resources in the Qur’an and the sunnah (Prophetic speech and practice) as well as Islamic legal sources. As I will discuss, this effort also increasingly involves reaching out to and including male religious scholars and leaders in anti-DV efforts that initially were often led primarily by Muslim women activists.

Marriage, Patriarchy, and DV

In my interviews with advocates and service providers, as well as in observations of DV presentations and workshops in Muslim communities, a central theme that emerges is the resistance to discussing, and indeed the denial of many American Muslims of, the existence of DV in their midst. Advocates reflect at great length on the obstacles they have faced and are still facing in even mentioning the existence of this problem. This experience of denial and rejection early on led advocates to shift their community efforts from addressing DV directly to approaches focused on healthy Muslim marriages and the formulation of an Islamic marriage and family ideal derived from the Qur’an and the sunnah. This approach allowed them two opportunities: they could bring DV into the conversation as they discussed family situations in which the Islamic marriage model is violated; and they could distinguish themselves from mainstream DV organizations and service providers who have been perceived as intrusive, bent on destroying Muslim families, and not least, informed by Western feminism. Also, while Muslim DV advocates typically acknowledge that the vast majority of DV victims are women and sometimes their children, much awareness work now acknowledges that men are also DV victims and that it is important to broaden the framework to include them.

In these presentations and workshops, the Islamic marriage ideal is presented as derived from verses in the Qur’an that emphasize tranquility, mutual respect, and cooperation within the Muslim family. Where suitable, presenters cite the example of the Prophet Muhammad in dealing with his own wives (the irony of presenting a polygamous family as the model for a harmonious relationship is mostly lost here) to further develop a marriage model in which husband and wife are described as “garments for one another” (Qur’an 2: 187).7 In information materials and

7 For example, the title of the training material (a DVD and accompanying fliers and a book) developed by the Peaceful Families Project in conjunction with FaithTrust Institute, an interreligious organization dedicated to “working together to end sexual and domestic



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presentations, marital relations are described as based on a complementary gender model, in which both men and women fulfill particular roles in order to assure peace and balance in human society. Couples are encouraged to find ways to resolve conflict and disagreement in mutually satisfactory ways, and various forms of coercion including physical, emotional, economic, sexual, and spiritual abuse are cited as unacceptable means of conflict resolution. Divorce is presented as a distinct possibility in situation where disputes cannot be resolved within the framework of the marriage.8

Among those offering a Qur’anic model, Zainab Alwani and Salma Abugideiri base their discussion of Islamic marriage on the following verse of the Qur’an 30:21 “[a]nd among His signs is this: that He created for you mates from among yourselves, that you may dwell in tranquility with them, and He has put love and mercy between your (hearts). Verily in that are signs for those who reflect” (Alwani 2003: 18). They argue that “marriage is considered in Islam to be an act of obedience to God, and the goal of each person within the marriage is to please God by living a divinely guided life and avoiding His prohibitions” (Alwani 2003: 18). Qur’an 30:21 contains the key terms utilized in Muslim discourses on healthy marriage and domestic violence: love (mawadda), tranquility (sakinah), and mercy (rahma). These concepts are emphasized in educational materials, workshops, and discussions of healthy marriage, and their absence in a marriage is cause for describing that marriage as outside the bounds of Islamic marriage norms. These concepts also allow Muslim DV activists to identify what constitutes domestic abuse: any behavior on the part of a family member that replaces love, mercy, and tranquility with oppression, which is identified as a great sin in Islam. These Qur‘anically derived concepts are then combined with the familiar mainstream definition of domestic violence as a pattern of power and control that generates fear and various forms of abuse in its wake.

Alwani and Abugideiri go on to describe the family structure of a Muslim family as generally outlined in the Qur’an, but they also point out that every family is unique and influenced by factors such as “various cultures, education backgrounds, socio-economic status, etc.” (Alwani and Abugideiri, 2003:19). In a short section on gender roles, the Qur’anic passage referenced in my original epigraph appears in their publication: “The Qur’an established that the man is the head of the household, responsible for maintaining the family financially” (Alwani and Abugideiri 2003: 20). They then point out that men and women should be partners in raising healthy families and children, and that men are required to work while women are not. The complementary gender roles the authors identify in the first part of Qur’an 4:34 do not, according to them, imply that “men are better than, or have God-given power over, women” (Alwani and Abugideiri 2003: 20).

violence” (www.faithtrust.org) is “Garments for One Another: Ending Domestic Violence in Muslim Families.”

8 See for example the book distributed by the Peaceful Families Project (Alwani and Abugideiri 2003).



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This model of Islamic marriage clearly inscribes a complementary, patriarchal, and arguably hierarchical gender structure onto families and thus onto society.

By contrast, the core of the Musawah project launched in Kuala Lumpur in 2009 is its focus on qiwamah in the first part of the famous verse 4:34 in the Qur’an, as the Mir-Hossein and Anwar epigraph underscores. This project brings together an international group of Muslim women activists and scholars in an effort to produce new feminist knowledge that critically engages with classical jurists’ interpretations of qiwamah and wilayah, a Global Life Stories Project to document the life stories of selected women and men in 11 countries, focusing on how qiwamah and wilayah are experienced, understood, and contested in their lived realities, and the use of quantitative and qualitative data to show the disconnect between law and the socio-economic realities of Muslim women today (Mir-Hosseini 2012).

Since historically, however, Muslim feminist9 scholars and others have focused on the second part of Qur’an 4:34, their interpretations are worth contemplating in some detail in a project on Muslim responses to domestic violence.

Feminists, the Qur’an, and Interpretation

A Qur’anic verse that seems to tell Muslim husbands to “strike,” “beat,” or even “scourge” their wives in cases of “disobedience” or marital dispute is bound to generate attention to that verse and various investments in its interpretation. While it is not possible in this chapter to discuss in appropriate depth the history of Muslims’ engagement with their sacred text, suffice it to say here that the Qur’an, which Muslims consider to be the literal word of God as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, has been approached as a text that is meant to be interpreted. The genre of tafsir, Qur’anic exegesis, is one of the three pillars of the Islamic sciences, and such exegesis has been carried out in documented and systematic forms at least since the eighth century. It can also be argued, and this will become important for our discussion below, that the Prophet Muhammad was the first interpreter of the divine word as he explained the revelations he received to the community surrounding him. These explanations as well as his other sayings and actions are summarized as the sunnah and are considered the second most relevant source of divine guidance for Muslims.

Qur’an 4:34, sometimes even called the “beating verse,” appears to lay out a specific framework for addressing marital discord:

1. It addresses husbands but not wives directly;2. It describes nushuz of the wife as the condition for setting in motion any

responses by the husband; and

9 I use the term “feminist” for some of the scholars discussed here because many of them have expressed their reservations about self-labeling or being labeled as such. See a brief discussion of this issue in Hammer 2012a and Shaikh 2003.



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3. It creates a progressive form of “discipline that must begin with “admonition” and can then progress to “not sharing [the wives’] beds” and then to “striking” them.

Kecia Ali has chosen not to translate the relevant Arabic terms precisely because she recognizes that any translation constitutes an interpretation as well. Contemporary Muslim exegetes, women as well as men, have offered a variety of interpretations of 4:34, clearly because the verse causes a sense of cognitive dissonance for many Muslims.10 Both the method applied and the interpretational possibilities that emerge are varied. One main methodological approach to 4:34 focuses on the word daraba and attempts, in a variety of ways, to translate and interpret the word itself in a way that is different from many of the pre-modern interpretations. The second approach involves an acknowledgement that the meaning of the word daraba is indeed “to strike” or “to hit” but argues that both the circumstances of a marital dispute situation and the context of the Qur’anic text need to be taken into consideration in understanding its implications. For those who use the second approach, the example of the Prophet Muhammad is often invoked to soften the meaning and restrict the applicability of the verse.

As an example of the “circumstances” approach to the text, Khaled Abou El Fadl, an Islamic law specialist and professor at UCLA, has argued that daraba in this verse indeed means “to strike” but that the applicable circumstances are limited to cases of the wife’s marital infidelity rather than a much broader definition of wifely disobedience. He adds that even in a case of “lewd acts” by the wife, the Prophetic example demonstrates that husbands should not assume the power to physically discipline the wife—the Prophet Muhammad is reported to have never physically harmed any of his wives. Abou El Fadl emphasizes the spirit of justice and kindness in marriage emerging from other verses in the Qur’an and cautions that interpreters must also consider the next verse of the Qur’an, 4:35, which talks about marital arbitration and divorce in considerations of 4:34 (Abou el Fadl, 2006: 107–11).

Using a contextual approach to the text, Asma Barlas, who has authored a feminist reinterpretation of the Qur’an, discusses the entire verse 4:34 and rejects the notion that the first part of the verse gives men preference over women per se. She argues that an interpretation representing the husband as the head of the household (even if he is the breadwinner) invites an analogy between the relationship between husband and wife and the relationship between God and human beings; thus setting up the possibility of shirk, associating humans (or anything) with God on His level that constitutes the greatest sin in Islam. In Barlas’s view, daraba might mean striking but if it does, this passage restricts rather than encourages physical disciplining. If it is applied at all, the beating should be light

10 Some contemporary exegetes have relied on existing pre-modern interpretations while many others have applied more recent methods to reinterpret the Qur’an for our time. For discussions of pre-modern interpretations see Bauer 2006 and Ali 2006.



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and not inflict bodily harm because it is symbolic. Barlas is clearly not entirely comfortable with even this as a possibility and she suggests that other meanings of the word itself need to be explored. In any case she argues the meaning of the verse is far too ambiguous to be followed literally (Barlas 2003: 184–9).

Using another contextual approach, Azizah al-Hibri, feminist Islamic law scholar and founder of Karamah: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, acknowledges that daraba means “to hit” but emphasizes that the intent of the passage was to limit physical disciplining to a symbolic act in Arabian society of the seventh century when there were no limitations on how husbands could treat their wives (Al-Hibri 2003: 195–219). Al-Hibri emphasizes the need to pursue other means for solving marital conflict. She also points out that acts of infidelity in marriage are regulated by Islamic law, punishable by society, and thus beyond the bounds of the authority of an individual husband. One could argue that al-Hibri draws on selected pre-modern interpretations that support her argument of restraint. However, one could also argue that all interpretation selectively engages with the textual sources and existing interpretations. The broader question of how the Qur’an should be read and interpreted as a historical text within and beyond its own context is brought to the fore in al-Hibri’s work, although, like in many other contemporary Qur’an interpretations, it remains unaddressed directly.

Amina Wadud, leading feminist interpreter of the Qur’an and advocate for gender equality in Islam, has gone through a process of interpretive negotiation since her 1992 reading of daraba, which claimed that it contradicts the spirit of justice in the Qur’an and harmony in marriage (Wadud 1999). That reading, clearly reflecting her own discomfort with the existence of the verse in the Qur’an, culminated in her rejection of the verse in her 2006 book Inside the Gender Jihad where she writes: “[t]here is no getting around this one, even though I have tried through different methods for two decades. I simply do not and cannot condone permission for a man to ‘scourge’ or apply any kind of strike to a woman. … This leads me to clarify how I have finally come to say ‘no’ outright to the literal implementation of this passage” (Wadud 2006: 200).

Laury Silvers, scholar of Islamic studies, has offered what is in my view the most complex interpretation of daraba in 4:34. Silvers approaches the verse as an ethical problem, starting with the assumption that Muslims would have a problem with its existence in the Qur’an. She rethinks its existence in two important ways. First, she considers the verse as a command to husbands and then ponders the kind of divine command it would then have to be. In her conclusion, she comes to argue that the verse exists in order to induce a crisis of conscience, a test of the humanity, and responsibility of the individual human being who appears called to commit violence on another person. This interpretation extends the verse beyond husbands to test all of humanity, for every Muslim is charged to take a stand on 4:34 and its meaning (Silvers 2006: 171–80). Silvers also draws on the Prophetic example, not only citing the Prophet’s own rejection of physical disciplining as a practice, but also his reported discomfort with the revelation of the verse (Silvers 2006: 176).



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When Laleh Bakhtiar undertook a new translation/interpretation of the entire Qur’an, she almost stopped when she came to 4:34. However, she continued with the mission to find an alternative interpretation to daraba as meaning “to strike.” Bakhtiar translates daraba as “to go away from them” and dedicates much of her translation’s preface and introduction to her reflections on why the Qur’an cannot include a command for husbands to strike their wives (Bakhtiar 2007: xli–lvi).

All of the approaches to 4:34 that I have selected share a commitment to gender equity or equality, and the recognition that gender roles in Muslim societies and communities need to be rethought and renegotiated. In other words, these exegetes have value commitments and principles that require them to reread and rethink this particular passage of the Qur’an as part of a more general rethinking of gender norms in Islam as represented in the Qur’an. It must be acknowledged that other exegetes do not have any such commitments to gender equality, even if they may not be able to escape the pressure to comment on gender issues. They do, however, recognize the significance of 4:34 for Islamic marriage and family models, and often for discussions of domestic violence as well, which is important for any discussion about DV work in Muslim communities.

Ayesha Chaudhry has analyzed contemporary Muslim approaches to 4:34 in an essay that frames such approaches as a problem of conscience and hermeneutics. Her categories do not focus on gender value commitments but rather on how approaches to 4:34 reflect issues of textual authority and interpretation more generally. Chaudhry points out that not all contemporary “believing” scholars struggle with 4:34. However, argues Chaudhry, those who do—and there are many examples—can be categorized as traditionalist, idealist, or reformist (Chaudhry 2006: 158). Traditionalist approaches utilize the sunnah as explaining the Qur’anic text, allowing at least a softening of the verse’s meaning but also taking away the Muslim community’s autonomy to interpret the text. Idealists also make the sunnah central to Qur’anic interpretation but they hold onto ideals that they are intent on finding in the Qur’an, which necessitates greater interpretive authority of the community. Finally, reformists perceive the sunnah as supplementary to Qur’anic interpretation, while placing the most emphasis on communal interpretive authority and often limiting or rejecting the pre-modern exegetical tradition. Chaudhry classifies Asma Barlas as an idealist and Amina Wadud as a reformist who started out in the idealist camp. She argues that only the reformist approach can resolve the tension between the text of the Qur’an and gender justice, even though it is still in its formative stage. Chaudhry cites Kecia Ali as acknowledging that the Qur’anic text itself may have patriarchal or androcentric limitations that can only be resolved by broadening the sources for exegesis (Chaudhry 2006: 157).

In summary, contemporary exegetes have at their disposal several hermeneutical strategies to deal with the difficulties of this text. They can challenge the meaning/translation of the word daraba; limit its meaning to symbolic acts or without imperative power; limit the text by applying personal conscience in its application; limit its application by arguing with the Prophetic example; or balance/challenge



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the verse with other verses from the Qur’an pertaining to marriage and family. These interpretative strategies are not limited to feminist or gender-conscious approaches. However, their relevance for grassroots advocacy efforts depends precisely on whether the exegetes advancing them express commitment to gender equality in their work.

Verse 4:34 in the Qur’an is of obvious relevance for a discussion of domestic violence in Muslim communities, but it is also at the heart of my own struggles with issues of conscience and hermeneutics in my study of DV. In fact, it was the ethical struggle of feminist Muslim scholars with 4:34 that first made me aware that domestic violence is an issue in American Muslim communities. Imagine my surprise when I found that while the advocacy and service efforts I study may use similar arguments and methods to these, most of the advocates would be very uncomfortable citing feminist scholarship as authoritative arguments against domestic violence. This is an issue of gendered religious authority in some ways—Muslim women scholars are invested with less interpretive authority—but it is also a conundrum resulting from community assumptions that feminism is a “Western”, and thus un-Islamic, framework: the view of many advocates is that reaching those in need of advocacy and services cannot be jeopardized by ideological disagreements. This tension is at the core of much of the Muslim DV activism I have encountered and studied over the past years. In what follows, I want to recount two episodes from my ethnographic fieldwork, then interpret and contextualize them within a framework of feminism, religion, and law.

“Protect Us and Maintain Us”—Feminism Revisited

As one of my first participant observations in this project, I am invited to a fundraising event held by Muslimat al-Nisaa, a Muslim women’s shelter in Baltimore in October of 2010. I am early and so I get to sit at one of the front tables. I notice a banner on the podium with a purple background and white lettering and I do not believe my eyes. The banner reads:

Figure 10.1 Muslim inter-community network poster

Muslimat Al-Nisaa/Muslim Inter-Community NetworkHealth & Shelter Organization

Homeless Muslim Women

Love Us!Protect Us!

Maintain Us!

Surah al-Nisaa: 34



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My immediate response is disbelief. Rather than problematizing 4:34, which is a verse that many Muslim DV advocates are aware of, this organization’s leadership has chosen to utilize the verse as a tool for combating domestic violence in Muslim communities! The banner also describes the shelter as a health and shelter organization for homeless Muslim women, an emphasis that Asma Hanif, its director, explained to me was a necessary move because Muslim communities in the DC area were not receptive to the idea of talking about domestic violence. Hanif is very open about this shifting emphasis and speaks about it in public. She argues that Muslim women often become homeless as a result of domestic abuse and acknowledges that the shelter primarily houses survivors of domestic violence. Despite this shift, the fundraiser is not well attended; and while community leaders and even a member of the Islamic hiphop group Native Deen all provide encouragement and emphasize the importance of the shelter for the community, not much money is raised that evening.

In this narrative, the leaders of Muslimat al-Nisaa take the first part of 4:34, “men are the protectors/maintainers of women” (which also inspired the title of this chapter) as a command for husbands. They define protection and maintenance as a responsibility rather than a right or privilege; and thus, they endorse a complementary and hierarchical gender model while maintaining that domestic violence is un-Islamic and against the normative Islamic marriage model. Qiwamah is interpreted to require husbands to maintain and to provide safety and protection for all family members. In the FAITH publication What Islam Says About Domestic Violence, and in many other conversations and training sessions, many Muslim DV advocates endorse a marriage model that requires consultation but invests the husband with the ultimate authority to make decisions. Alwani and Abugideiri write in their section on Decision-Making in the Family: “[b]ecause the purpose of any leadership role in Islam is not control and power, but rather, to safeguard the best interest of the group, there is no fear of losing authority on the part of the leader by consulting with the members of that group” (Alwani and Abugideiri 2003: 22). Note the use of the terms “control and power” here distinguish between abusive assumption of leadership and authority and rightful, consultative leadership in which the husband is equated with a political leader.

As noted, my own instinctive reaction was first disbelief, then concern, and then a serious questioning of my own assumptions and values. What if a hierarchical marriage model, especially one framed as religiously normative, is not in itself more conducive to domestic violence, the assuming and abuse of power and control, as I had assumed? What if a gender-equal marital relationship is not less prone to domestic abuse than a hierarchical one?11 What if Muslim women and men can live in marital relationships that I cannot imagine for myself but yet

11 I am not sure quantitative data is necessarily useful here, but one study found an inverse statistical relationship between religious observance and family violence in U.S. couples (see Ellison 2001).



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are deeply fulfilling and harmonious in their complementary gender roles? If I insist on marital gender equality as the only acceptable form of marriage, I may have not only created a set of deep challenges to my own religious commitments, but in the process also intellectually dominated and patronized those Muslim women and men who have made commitments to an alternative model. Even worse, I could potentially undermine the work of Muslim DV advocates whose exegetical and religious arguments against violence rest on the religious authority of the text itself and of its authoritative interpreters. In order to make normative arguments about the Islamic marriage ideal, Muslim advocates need to emphasize the textual authority of the Qur’an and the example of the Prophet Muhammad. As we have seen, many different interpretations of verse 4:34 have been advanced and substantiated through different exegetical methods. However, the potentially resulting exegetical relativism (everyone interprets the Qur’an for themselves) can undermine the absolute authority of the text and invest the interpreter with little authority in Muslim communities. It is no coincidence that Muslim DV advocates have more recently enlisted the support of prominent (mostly male) religious scholars and leaders of the American Muslim community to raise awareness of and build arguments against domestic violence.

When Sharifa Alkhateeb conducted her empirically supported research on domestic violence in Muslim communities in the mid-1990s, she spent much of her time approaching Muslim religious scholars and leaders because she recognized early on that they constituted the authoritative access points to the communities (Alkhateeb 1999). Since then several prominent Muslim leaders have lent their voice to the cause of eradicating domestic violence: Mohamed Magid, the Imam of Adams Mosque in Northern Virginia and president of ISNA; Hamza Yusuf and Zaid Shakir of Zaytuna Institute and College; Taher Jabir Alalwani, a prominent scholar affiliated with the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) in Northern Virginia; and several others.12 In practice, however, there is a range of ways in which Muslim DV organizations and advocates negotiate the issue of authority as it applies to progressive or gender-equality oriented scholarship. Many grassroots DV organizations would not openly cite the interpretations of Muslim scholars they consider progressive or feminist for fear of backlash from communities. Others feared doing so in the past but they are now beginning to include such positions in their training materials.13 In interviews I also found that even when organizations do not cite feminist scholars, some Muslim DV

12 See, statements posted on YouTube videos but also prominently in “Garments for One Another.”

13 A brochure/pdf from the Muslim Advocacy Network Against Domestic Violence (MANADV), an umbrella organization that has connected advocates from a range of other Muslim organizations on the DV issue, lists the works of Kecia Ali, Asma Barlas, Amina Wadud, and Nimat Barazangi, all women scholars associated with commitments to gender justice as (the only) resources on gender roles, even though I have never seen any of these scholars mentioned in trainings or workshops. See, “Educating Muslim Communities



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advocates espouse gender-egalitarian positions in their own lives. In interviews several women advocates reflecting on this dilemma emphasized that their priority is to reach American Muslims with their work. If that requires temporarily shelving their own gender justice-oriented convictions, they are willing to make that sacrifice, hoping that in the future such dynamics may change. Other activists embrace the marriage model I described above as divinely ordained and do not experience the cognitive dissonance I do.

“In Islam, we Believe in Divorce”—Imams, Communities, and Islamic Law

At a training session for imams14 in 2011, the religious leader who offers the training together with a woman advocate from a Muslim advocacy organization discusses the expectations of imams as leaders of their communities in domestic violence cases. It is clear that all of those present have made a commitment to learn about DV and are thus among those American Muslim leaders aware of DV issues and willing to learn more. The workshop leader states—in no uncertain terms—that if a woman approaches an imam for help in a case of domestic abuse, he has the responsibility to grant her a religious divorce. He outlines the foundations of the Islamic marriage model as based on mercy, compassion, and tranquility, repeating Qur’anic verses and references to the sunnah. He also points out that a family or marriage in which one of the spouses is oppressed and treated unjustly is “not an Islamic marriage.” The response from the attendees of the training is mixed. Many are concerned about the true nature of family dynamics, the need for privacy in family affairs, and the possibility that women would fabricate abuse claims that later are exposed, which in turn would undermine the imams’ authority as community leaders. They seem afraid to interfere. It also becomes clear that many perform religious marriage ceremonies but few know about state marriage and divorce laws. The workshop leader strongly advocates pre-marital counseling, which he requires of couples before he officiates at their wedding, and presents a standard marriage contract, outlining the possibility for negotiating specific conditions for married life as well as divorce.15

about Domestic Violence—Presentation Guide 2012,” prepared by Bonita McGee from the Islamic Social Services Association, USA.

14 The word imam literally means someone who stands in front of the congregation to lead prayers. The title imam is used loosely in the U.S. context to denote a religious community leader, sometimes mosque leader, but rarely a trained scholar in Islamic legal interpretation.

15 The need for more systematic and possibly standardized pre-marital counseling for Muslim couples is at the heart of one of the initiatives of the Islamic Social Services Association (ISSA USA), http://www.issausa.org/index.php?-option=com_content&view=



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This episode highlights one of the most complex issues in the lives of American Muslims, especially Muslim DV advocates, namely the role of Islamic law in guiding and regulating American Muslim practice. It is both a question of legal authority and the personnel to assume such authority, and a question of the applicability and continuous development of Islamic legal interpretation in a Muslim minority and secular state context. Muslims have debated the role and function of Islamic law16 in a modern context since the nineteenth century; and Muslim majority countries achieving independence in the early and mid-twentieth century have incorporated traditional Islamic law to varying degrees into their nation-state legal system. Colonial domination and the forceful introduction of European legal codes are chiefly responsible for the destruction of traditional structures of Islamic jurisprudence. Ironically, it is the “modernization” of Islamic law that has led to its increasingly rigid structure which was only exacerbated by the fact that national laws allow for much less flexibility in legal interpretation and the application of established legal rulings. The crisis of legal authority has been described as one of the reasons for the rise of religious fundamentalism17 and it has played out in very particular ways in minority communities such as for Muslims in the United States.

While there is quite an extensive Muslim legal literature on Islamic minority law which could be applied in a context like the United States, the destruction of traditional structures of legal learning and application has restricted the availability as well as the authority of Muslim legal scholars in American Muslim communities.18 It has, I would argue, also affected the role of Islamic law in religious practice and thus the very lives of American Muslims. And needless to say, this crisis of Islamic law is compounded by a deep questioning of whether, and if so how, Islamic law can or should be reconciled with the American legal system.

These problems with the authority of Islamic law in a secular nation-state play out in grassroots work on domestic violence and constructing a broader

article&id=50&Itemid=59. The same organization also runs DV awareness campaigns and offers workshops and trainings for community leaders, members, providers, and advocates.

Mohamed Magid, the imam of the ADAMS mosque in Northern Virginia and since 2010 president of ISNA, has developed a 100-question pre-marital questionnaire that has been adopted by several other mosques and community centers across the country. One set of questions on that list is intended to screen for signs of abusive behavior in the potential spouse and thus relates directly to concerns with domestic violence. See http://www.adamscenter.org/-services/marriage.

16 I hesitate to use the term shari’ah here even though it has arguably acquired term status in English. By Islamic law I mean the range, history, and negotiation of Islamic jurisprudence and not an eternally fixed system of divinely decreed rules. I will discuss below the significance of the “creeping shari’ah” campaign of neo-conservative Islamophobes for DV work and marriage arbitration.

17 See, for example, Abou El Fadl 2005. 18 See Fishman 2006, Parray 2012, and Abou El Fadl 2000.



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framework of healthy Islamic marriages that I have described above, particularly the conditions for divorce. In the workshop I described, most of the imams reported that they performed religious marriage ceremonies, some with authority from the state, others without. Marriage in Islamic law is a contract with specific regulations and conditions, some of which differ according to the Islamic school of jurisprudence, and/or geographical region, and attached traditions. Anecdotally it seems that many American Muslims do marry according to Islamic law, i.e. have a religious marriage ceremony (often called nikah) which serves as a civil marriage or they have a separate civil ceremony according to state law.

The more complicated problem lies in how divorce is administered according to Islamic law in a secular state. Without going into too much legal detail, Muslim men can initiate a divorce that will hold up in an Islamic court without the involvement of a judge or lawyer. This form of divorce, called talaq, is also available to women under certain circumstances (including abuse) but it can only be granted by a judge or legal scholar. The same is true for the annulment of a marriage, called khul’, which can be initiated by the wife, but only by forfeiting her dowry and maintenance. Both forms of divorce require child support from the husband. The complication here becomes that the imams and religious leaders in the United States are often not trained legal scholars; and since there is no system of Islamic judges and courts in the United States, women are forced to defer to the legal authority of leaders who lack sufficient training to make these important legal decisions.

Whether a civil divorce is automatically assumed to be a religious divorce as well depends on the level of the local Muslim community’s involvement with domestic law, the state legal system, and a range of political investments and stances. Recent neo-conservative campaigns to exclude “shari’ah” from the American legal system have curtailed women advocates’ attempts to tailor Islamic marriage contracts so they can stand up in an American court, especially regarding maintenance and child support,19 as well as the possibility of religious arbitration which may help abused women get what they need. While the political and legal implications of the anti-shari’ah campaign are complicated, it is important to recognize that the efforts of Muslim DV activists are often caught up in larger issues of Islamophobia, anti-Muslim sentiment, xenophobia, and racism.20

For victims of domestic abuse, this legal/religious limbo creates additional openings for abuse. For example, husbands can withhold a religious divorce even when the civil divorce has been finalized, which leads to community perceptions that abuse victims are “not really” divorced, leading to diminished prospects for remarriage. Most importantly, women then fear that they have not followed God’s

19 See Quraishi-Landes, Chapter 7 in this volume. See also the research and advocacy work of Karamah: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, on marriage contracts, www.karamah.org.

20 See Hammer 2012b for a small window on gendered Islamophobia and some of the resources and reports on the issue.



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command and laws. Sometimes, according to DV advocates, spiritual abuse meets sexual abuse as in cases where the civilly divorced (ex) husband demands a right to sexual access because the couple is still religiously married. In this light, the admonition of the workshop leader that there should be no question about granting an abused woman an immediate religious divorce is important and justified. One section of “Garments for One Another,” the educational DVD from Peaceful Families Project and FaithTrust Institute, is entitled “Is Divorce an Option?” In it, Imam Mohamed Magid of the Adams Center says, “[t]ell them: Listen, she is not a slave in this relationship. This relationship has to be mutual respect, mutual love. If you guys cannot make it, there is another word, it is called divorce. In Islam we do believe in divorce”21 (FaithTrust Institute 2007). From this position, Zainab Alwani argues that scholars and leaders are not per se encouraging divorce, a charge that may cause them to take a defensive posture in anticipation of pushback. Rather, they are simply encouraging peaceful families, which is best for women and men, as well as their children. One of the survivors featured in the film then recounts:

I did have this sneaking suspicion that I would find out that Islam wasn’t for me, and that God really did believe that my husband was right. And so it was through that reading (of the Qur’an) that I realized that it wasn’t that God was for either of us but that God was ultimately merciful and just, and that God did not want me to stay in a relationship that is unjust, and that I had to have the strength to leave what is not good for me (FaithTrust Institute 2007).22

This woman’s story is significant in several ways: it recounts one of the effects that negative Muslim community responses and the following failure by religious leaders to act on behalf of DV victims can have on abused women. When religion is used as a roadblock to escape and healing, it can also become one of the aspects of the survivor’s identity to be shed or rejected. On the other side, the threat of “losing” Muslim women because of inadequate responses to domestic violence can sometimes be used as a tool to jolt Muslim communities and leaders into action.

An additional complication with Islamic marriage and divorce law in American Muslim communities is the very nature of legal interpretation, which is at least theoretically understood to be flexible from one interpreter to the next. DV organizations are reluctant to subscribe to exegetical interpretive relativism that undermines both the authority of the sacred text and the normative marriage framework developed in Muslim DV advocacy because such interpretive flexibility can yield a range of results, not all of which are in the interest of

21 This quote provided the inspiration for the subheading of this section.22 The name of the survivor is provided on the DVD, however, in screenings of

the film the producers and trainers at PFP always encourage confidentiality, so I will not disclose the name.



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preventing and combatting domestic violence. In a recent provider workshop, the trainer emphasized several times—in response to specific questions about Islamic law and differences in Sunni and Shi’a interpretations and practices—that the safest argument was to be found in the Qur’anic passages on marriage tranquility, stability, and compassion. She went on to say that both the hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) and Islamic law were “more tricky” and could thus complicate advocacy work rather than support it. She also emphatically pointed to the availability and religious sanction of divorce, not only in cases of abuse, but also as a remedy for spousal incompatibility. This last remark was important to her because Muslim community members do not always consider divorce a religious and thus legal possibility.

The reluctance to grant women a religious divorce by imams present at the workshop may have been related to this perception and its prevalence in Muslim communities. Muslim DV advocates report that divorce, even in abusive conditions, is discouraged by community and family members, and sometimes also by religious leaders. Situations of domestic disputes and even outright abuse are cast as a test of faith to be borne with steadfastness and a willingness to trust in God’s plan, which develop virtues such as patience and forgiveness. These exhortations combine with the power of communal reputation can become a strong deterrent for abused women to end their marriages and achieve safety.

Thus, the education of victims, survivors, religious leaders and whole communities about women’s legal rights to divorce, maintenance, and child custody, as well as the right to stipulate conditions in the marriage contract, are an important part of Muslim DV advocacy and marriage and family initiatives more broadly. Here too, interpretations of sacred sources as well as legal rulings meet and intersect with questions about gender roles, equality, and ultimately, feminism.

Conclusion

The complex and multi-faceted work of Muslim DV advocates has been challenging to me as a Muslim scholar and as a feminist invested in gender justice and equality. I can recall the workshop where the layers of domestic violence women experienced were symbolized by headscarves draped over the head of the Muslim trainer; a joint Muslim Jewish attempt at convincing mainstream providers at a state coalition training that religion is a resource for DV advocacy; and the request at an imam training session that the woman trainer should converse from behind a screen. Each of these narratives is part of a web of religious challenges, from activism on behalf of victims of domestic abuse to negotiating secular and religious law. Each of them has also challenged me to think carefully about how to critique Muslim efforts against domestic violence and what the purpose of such analysis and critique might be. This challenge has opened up the possibility for a more critical engagement with secular feminism as well as with feminist assumptions about religion, marriage, and family.



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At the same time I also consider it of vital importance to continuously challenge Muslim communities from within a framework of religious reinterpretation and reform. The work of Musawah has been an inspiration because the organization refuses to back down from equality commitments despite community backlash and because Musawah scholars and leaders have recognized the significance of Islamic legal reform as an avenue for change in Muslim communities. I want to end with the words of Musawah scholars Ziba Mir-Hosseini and Zainah Anwar:

In this and other projects, Musawah’s objective is to insert women’s concerns and voices into the production of religious knowledge and legal reform in Muslim contexts. We do this by linking scholarship with activism and by bridging two gaps in the Muslim family law debates and in Muslim legal tradition. First, a majority of Muslim religious scholars are gender blind (gender biased and misogynist is probably more correct); they are ignorant of feminist theories (some genuinely and others more willfully) and unaware of the importance of gender as a category of thought. Secondly, many women’s rights activists and campaigners in Muslim contexts, in line with mainstream feminism, have long considered working within a religious framework to be counter-productive; they want to work only within a human rights framework, and avoid any religion-based arguments. But they tend to overlook how feminism’s epistemological heritage can be put to use. We examine how we know what we know about women in all branches of knowledge, including religious knowledge. This not only sheds light on laws and practices that take their legitimacy from religion but also enables a challenge, from within, to the patriarchy that is institutionalised in Muslim legal tradition (Mir-Hosseini 2012).

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"Men are the Protectors of Women": American Muslim Negotiations of Domestic Violence, Marriage, and Feminism

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