Here’s the verse in English (Sahih International translation):

“Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in [the husband’s] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those [wives] from whom you fear arrogance - [first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them. But if they obey you [once more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted and Grand.”

Link (You can also read the Arabic version here): https://quran.com/4/34

This verse is fairly self-explanatory. It instructs muslims on how women should be treated. The verse states that men are in charge of women and how they spend their wealth, good women are those who obey, and if a woman disobeys then her husband can warn her, forsake her, and finally, beat her.

Don’t believe I have the right interpretation? Fine, here’s an islamic website that the echos the same meaning (I’ll get to the justifications they use later).

But first, let me explain why this verse just reeks of misogyny. This verse clearly demonstrates that women are inferiors in multiple ways. The first is that men are in charge of them and their wealth, this sets a hierarchy among the genders where men are placed above women. The verse reinforces this hierarchy by going on to say that women are to be subservient to their husbands. The verse portrays this obedience as being virtuous, however the verse contradicts itself by having the obedience be forced. Virtue is achieved through choice. If I choose to feed the homeless, than that is me taking action on my own behalf to demonstrate moral excellence. However, if I was forced to feed the homeless against my will, then how can it still be a virtue? You’re forced to do something, therefore you’re longer performing a certain action out of choice, but out of fear. In this case, it is the fear of being punished, specifically, getting beat by your husband. When someone is forced to do something against their will and is forced to obey, then it stops being about virtue and simply becomes slavery. This verse instructs the oppression of women.

This verse is repulsive and vile, and doesn’t receive nearly as much criticism as it should.

In my experience, there are generally three common non-islamic defenses for this verse, and all are weak since they are disingenuous and rely on logical fallacies:

1 - The first defense has to do with the word “اضربوهن” (adrabohen). It is translated as “strike them” in the translation. People who try to use this defense state that the word has multiple meanings, and the meaning cannot be accurately translated into other languages or that you misunderstood the actual meaning. However, this defense is very fallacious because it sets up a No True Scotsman.

If you concede even a little (especially if you don’t speak Arabic), then no matter what you say you will always will be met something like “but that’s not the REAL meaning”. However, the very premise of this argument stems disingenuous misinformation. Now, it is true that the word has multiple meanings (I’m an Arabic speaker), the word can both mean to hit/beat or to multiply. However, the context is crystal clear that it’s not talking about multiplication, but about wives. The word can literally be translated to “to hit/beat them (females)”, it’s important to note that Arabic is a gendered language and the “هن” is the plural feminine version of the “them”. Therefore, the word, when the context is taken into account, does in fact mean to hit/beat wives.

2 - The second defense tries to justify the wife beating by saying it doesn’t mean to beat your wives, but to “lightly” discipline them. They say that islam has a rules about how to beat your wife, and that it doesn’t allow super hard wife beatings… This argument is clearly trying to downplay the wife beating, and it fails at it because you can never ever justify wife beating.

Another common version of this defense tries to justify wife beating by saying it’s only allowed “in the most extreme cases”. However, that’s simply not true. By just using this very verse, you can easily figure out what the necessary conditions are to permit beating your wife. All that is required is for the wife to simply disobey you more than two times.

Considering a woman daring to disobey her husband to be an “extreme” case that warrants wife beating is simply anti-women. No matter how disobedient the wife is or how many times she disobeys, that doesn’t give anyone the right to beat her, or anyone really. Domestic violence can never be tolerated, yet both of these examples are used in the website that I used earlier to justify it.

3 - Finally, the third common defense is the good ol’ Tu Quoque fallacy, also known as, whataboutism. It is when they try to appeal to hypocrisy by bringing up other religions (especially Christianity) and saying “why are criticizing islam when these other religions have it too”. However, just because wife beating is present in other religions doesn’t mean that it’s justified in islam. This defense is just a poor attempt at derailing the conversation, and doesn’t negate anything.

At the the end of the day, this verse is indefensible. You can’t justify oppression and wife beating. This verse is sexist and misogynistic, and it could very well be argued that this verse is a direct influence on the misogyny present in islamic culture to this very day.

Note: I’m thinking of doing a series on islam where I create posts like this where I go through various verses, hadiths, and religious traditions and critique them directly on their own merits to the best of my abilities. However, I’ll only do it if there’s interest from the community so please let me know if you would like to see more.