The Meaning of Daraba: Difference between revisions

"Men are overseers over women, by reason of that wherewith Allah hath made one of them excel over another, and by reason of that which they expend of their substance. Wherefore righteous women are obedient, and are watchers in husbands absence by the aid and protection of Allah. And those wives whose refractoriness ye fear, exhort them, and avoid them in beds, '''and beat them'''; but if they obey you, seek not a way against them; verily Allah is ever Lofty, Grand." }}The word "wadribuuhunna" means "beat them (i.e. the wives of men)," but modern apologists, embarrassed about this obvious command for men to beat their wives in the Qur'an, have claimed rather that this verb means to "separate from them" or to "strike them out (sic)." All the verses that contain ''daraba'' against a human are understood to mean "beat" or "strike" that human, by their context, and this is agreed upon by these obscure "modern" translations. The only reason to translate the verb "daraba" to mean "separate from them" is to obfuscate the meaning of the verse for modern readers who view the injunction for men to beat their wives as barbaric, inhumane, incompatible with modern human rights. The attempts to translate this word in this way is novel, done only for audiences in majority non-Muslim countries, and flies in the face of over a thousand years of Islamic commentary and exegisis.  

An argument has been presented on some (progressive) Islamic websites and by some (progressive) Muslims and apologists which claim to have "modern" translations of the [[Qur'an]]<ref>Such as [http://free-minds.org Free-Minds.org] and [http://progressive-muslims.org Progressive-Muslims.org]</ref>, which claims that the Arabic verb "ضرب" "daraba" means something other than to "strike" "beat" or "hit." Alternatives offered include "separate from them" or somewhat nonsensically for a native English speaker  "strike them out." The people making these claims are generally seeking to "reform" [[Islam]], but this translation flies in the face of over a thousand years of understanding of the Arabic language, by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.  These apologetic arguments are clearly directed people of a westernized/liberal background with little to no knowledge of Arabic, as any Muslim who has an adequate command of the [[Arabic]] language or any non-Muslim Arab, or any non-Arabic speaking Muslim familiar with the [[hadith]] and [[tafsir]] text [[Wife Beating in Islamic Law#Islamic_Scriptures_and_Wife-Beating|related to this issue]], will find the claim being presented to be ridiculous and primae facia untenable. Despite this, the obviously incorrect translation of this verb can be found in prominent cases such as that of Laleh Bakhtiar, an American Muslim apologist. She went so far as to incorporat this incorrect translation into her  translation of the Qur'an, a translation which the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) refused to sell in their bookstore for its innaccuracy.

Once you have studied all those verses, you will find that they do not effect the interpretation of verse 4:34 whatsoever, and that the verb ''daraba'' was indeed correctly understood and translated as "beat".

In fact, all the other verses presented which contain ''darb'' are actually using the term figuratively. For example, "hit the sky" is a figurative expression; nothing can literally "hit" or "crash" with layers of gases, it is meant to be understood as "fly high through" the sky. These apologists will claim that this is a "different meaning" for the word "hit." So when someone says "I'll hit you," in actuality they meant "I'll fly high through you."

A comparison with English is useful: The meaning of many verbs differ according to the ''objects'' they are applied to and the ''prepositions'' with which they are used. Using the word "hit" in English as an example, which also means ''daraba'', a number of derivitive and metaphorical meanings of  "hit" may be arrived at, similar to ''daraba''.