New York, August 06: Alia (not her real name) knows very well what it’s like to live with an abusive husband. For eight long years she endured physical, verbal and mental abuse that almost turned her into a human wreck. “He would tell me that I was no better than a prostitute,” the mother of two told.
“I felt degraded. I had no personality.”
Alia recalls how the circle of violence began shortly after marriage.
She was not allowed to visit her family or drive.
He once grabbed her head and put it under running water from the sink when she asked to see her daughter from a previous relationship.
Another time, he choked and knocked her to the ground after she turned off the radio without asking for his consent.
A tearful Alia recalls how he was also violent with their two sons on more than occasion.
But it was the discovery that he was having an affair that made Alia decide to escape his abuse.
With the help of a relative, she packed her things and never returned back.
A recent survey by the North American Council for Muslim Women found that domestic violence occurred in about 10 percent of Muslim homes.
But according to studies, the US Muslim community, estimated at some seven millions, suffers nearly the same degree of domestic violence as the general population. Approximately 1.3 million women are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States.
Un-Islamic
At one point, Alia spoke about her abusive husband with a local imam from their neighborhood.
“I had never experienced these things,” she says.
“My dad never did this to my mom. I did not know what to do.”
The imam visited their house and spoke to her husband, warning him that his behaviors were un-Islamic.
“When we talk to men, we tell them they should not abuse their wives,” Abu Jafar Beg, the imam of the Jamaica Muslim Center in Queens, told.
“Even if they make mistakes, they should not do this. Women are our sisters and we should love and respect them.”
Robina Niaz, founder of the Turning Point organization that helps Muslim women subject to domestic violence, says abusive men usually invoke certain verses from the Muslim holy book to justify their actions.
“Some women are repeatedly told that it is against Islam to disobey the husband and that women are required to remain silent and endure,” Niaz, a Pakistani-American, told.
Mahbubur Rahman, a City University of New York professor, dismisses such interpretations as utterly erroneous.
“Islam prohibits and denounces all forms of domestic abuse and violence,” Rahman, a staunch advocate for abused women who teaches courses on politics and Islam, told.
He explains that marriage in Islam is a noble institution that requires couples to be “mindful, careful and merciful” when dealing with one another.
“There is no place for domestic abuse or violence in Islam.”
-Agencies