A habit of violence grown ordinary : constraints on Muslim women's participation in war - 1

According to the medieval scholar Tabari (d. 923 CE), for example, the verse "legislates men's authority over their women, which entails the male's right to discipline his women in order to ensure female obedience, both toward God and also himself". Female obedience, he says, "consists of marital fidelity, friendly behaviour toward the husband and his family, and good household management, while male authority includes the right of bodily chastisement as long as such is deserved".

Men are advised that the way to deal with a rebellious wife is, first, to "admonish her gently but with frequent repetition. If she does not recant, her husband can initiate the second stage, which is abandonment of the bed. This is the way to break her and her haughtiness. The last stage is that of beating, gently so as to avoid the face. If the wife obeys then the husband is to be gentle". (22) The reason for this sequence of actions is that the man must make clear at all times that he is the powerful one, he is in control. The danger is that men will stray from these relatively precise instructions in order to harm or even terrorize their wives. Another risk is that men will use their divinely ordained power to keep exclusive control over the instruments of violence, thereby marginalizing women's ability to participate in the building of the nation.

The treatment of women at the hands of men and their diminished status in society has sometimes been enforced by violence. Violence against women in the Islamic world takes many forms, both overt and more subtle, both physical and psychological. Although, as we have seen, the Qur'an allows the physical ill treatment of wives under certain conditions, some Muslims--either as governments, organized groups or individuals--have taken upon themselves the right to employ violence as a means of controlling women. This may take place in the immediate family--for example, the beating of wives or killing of daughters or sisters who have brought "dishonor" on the family--but also manifests itself in the treatment of female strangers, and in the creation of an environment in which violence, almost exclusively in the hands of men, is seen as the sole means of conflict resolution.

For example, in the wake of the Islamic revolution in Iran, all women were forced to adopt Islamic dress; those who did not comply with this ruling or were deemed to be insufficiently covered, were punished by gangs of Revolutionary Guards on the lookout for the smallest glimpse of female "immodesty". In the Gaza Strip, too, at the beginning of the Palestinian intifada in the late 1980s, a campaign of intimidation was waged against women by Islamist groups in order to ensure that no woman appeared in public without the Islamic hijab; unveiled women were subjected to taunts and even had stones thrown at them by religiously-motivated young men. (23) During the 1990s in Algeria, women who have refused to conform to Islamic dress codes have been murdered by zealous males--in the name of Islam. The same Islam is invoked in Afghanistan today to prevent women from working, receiving an education or even moving about in the public space. All such prohibitions and restrictions, which many argue are not Islamic, may be defined as greater or lesser forms of violence against women.