You are here: Home » Chapter 4 » Verse 34 » Translation
← Sura 4 →
← Aya 34 →
34
الرِّجالُ قَوّامونَ عَلَى النِّساءِ بِما فَضَّلَ اللَّهُ بَعضَهُم عَلىٰ بَعضٍ وَبِما أَنفَقوا مِن أَموالِهِم ۚ فَالصّالِحاتُ قانِتاتٌ حافِظاتٌ لِلغَيبِ بِما حَفِظَ اللَّهُ ۚ وَاللّاتي تَخافونَ نُشوزَهُنَّ فَعِظوهُنَّ وَاهجُروهُنَّ فِي المَضاجِعِ وَاضرِبوهُنَّ ۖ فَإِن أَطَعنَكُم فَلا تَبغوا عَلَيهِنَّ سَبيلًا ۗ إِنَّ اللَّهَ كانَ عَلِيًّا كَبيرًا

Muhammad Asad

MEN SHALL take full care of women with the bounties which God has bestowed more abundantly on the former than on the latter,1 and with what they may spend out of their possessions. And the righteous women are the truly devout ones, who guard the intimacy which God has [ordained to be] guarded.2 And as for those women whose ill-will3 you have reason to fear, admonish them [first]; then leave them alone in bed; then beat them;4 and if thereupon they pay you heed, do not seek to harm them. Behold, God is indeed most high, great!
  • Lit., "more on some of them than on the others".- The expression qawwam is an intensive form of qa'im ("one who is responsible for" or "takes care of" a thing or a person). Thus, qama 'ala l-mar'ah signifies "he undertook the maintenance of the woman" or "he maintained her" (see Lane VIII, 2995). The grammatical form qawwam is more comprehensive than qa'im, and combines the concepts of physical maintenance and protection as well as of moral responsibility: and it is because of the last-named factor that I have rendered this phrase as "men shall take full care of women".
  • Lit., "who guard that which cannot be perceived (al-ghayb) because God has [willed it to be] guarded".
  • The term nushuz (lit., "rebellion"- here rendered as "ill-will") comprises every kind of deliberate bad behaviour of a wife towards her husband or of a husband towards his wife, including what is nowadays described as "mental cruelty"; with reference to the husband, it also denotes "ill-treatment", in the physical sense, of his wife (cf. verse 128 of this surah). In this context, a wife's "ill-will" implies a deliberate, persistent breach of her marital obligations.
  • It is evident from many authentic Traditions that the Prophet himself intensely detested the idea of beating one's wife, and said on more than one occasion, "Could any of you beat his wife as he would beat a slave, and then lie with her in the evening?" (Bukhari and Muslim). According to another Tradition, he forbade the beating of any woman with the words, "Never beat God's handmaidens" (Abu Da'ud, Nasa'i, Ibn Majah, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ibn Hibban and Hakim, on the authority of Iyas ibn 'Abd Allah; Ibn Hibban, on the authority of 'Abd Allah ibn 'Abbas; and Bayhaqi, on the authority of Umm Kulthum). When the above Qur'an-verse authorizing the beating of a refractory wife was revealed, the Prophet is reported to have said: "I wanted one thing, but God has willed another thing - and what God has willed must be best" (see Manar V, 74). With all this, he stipulated in his sermon on the occasion of the Farewell Pilgrimage, shortly before his death, that beating should be resorted to only if the wife "has become guilty, in an obvious manner, of immoral conduct", and that it should be done "in such a way as not to cause pain (ghayr mubarrih)"; authentic Traditions to this effect are found in Muslim, Tirmidhi, Abu Da'ud, Nasa'i and Ibn Majah. On the basis of these Traditions, all the authorities stress that this "beating", if resorted to at all, should be more or less symbolic - "with a toothbrush, or some such thing" (Tabari, quoting the views of scholars of the earliest times), or even "with a folded handkerchief" (Razi); and some of the greatest Muslim scholars (e.g., Ash-Shafi'i) are of the opinion that it is just barely permissible, and should preferably be avoided: and they justify this opinion by the Prophet's personal feelings with regard to this problem.