Gaza mufti explains how men should hit their wives

The Gazan mufti Hassan al-Laham recently touted wife beating as God’s solution for marital strife.

“Allah created a solution for this…warn them [the wives], and separate from them, and hit them, and bring an arbitrator from his family and an arbitrator from her family. [Only] after this comes divorce. The husband starts with a warning,” he said in a segment aired on official Palestinian Authority TV on February 8, 2016, and translated by the watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch.

Asked what steps a husband should take, the mufti said: “The warning needs to be made politely by the husband to his wife, while he shows good relations, dialogue, respect and humanity,.”

He added that “the warning should be made using a good word, good treatment and a positive look.”

If the issue remains unresolved and efforts at reconciliation fail, only then, Laham advised, “comes the hitting — hitting that does not make her ugly.”

“The Prophet [Muhammad] said: ‘Do not hit the face and do not make her ugly,'” he continued. “In other words, not hitting that will bring the police and break her hand and cause bleeding, or hitting that makes the face ugly. No….The hitting is not meant to disfigure, harm, or degrade. The hitting will be like a joke. He will hit her jokingly.”