The Qurʾan and Domestic Violence: An Islamic Feminist, Spiritually Integrative Reading of Verse 4:34.

This paper examines Qurʾan 4:34, also known as the "beating verse," through an Islamic feminist lens, focusing attention on the importance of spirituality in the contemporary context. It contends that reading the Qurʾan as a spiritual method sheds new light on this verse, changing its interpretation from one that makes allowances for wife-beating to one that provides tangible techniques to combat this phenomenon. The paper examines how the verse introduces both positive and negative intervention strategies to restrain and overcome wife-beating, in conversation with Sufi conceptualizations of the spiritual path and progression from the "animal self" to the self-critical self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]