THE DAILY BLADE: When Did Mohammad Stop Beating His Wives?
Laleh Bakhtiar, a 68-year old Iranian-American who adopted her father’s Islamic faith when she became an adult, has been working on an updated English translation of the Koran for seven years. Her handiwork will roll off the printing press next month. The project was tough going for Bakhtiar, because she can read Arabic but does not speak the language. She was completely stopped in her tracks when she came to Chapter 4, Verse 34, which instructs that a rebellious wife should first be admonished, then shunned sexually, and finally “beaten” - the most common translation for the Arabic word “daraba” - unless she starts obeying her husband. Bakhtiar, who has a doctorate in educational psychology, tells The New York Times
“I couldn’t believe that [G-d] would sanction harming another human being except in war” and adds that the commonly understood meaning of the word “daraba” contradicts another Koranic verse, which states that a woman wanting a divorce should not be mistreated.
Other English translations of the Koran have variously translated “daraba” as beat, hit, strike, scourge, chastise, flog, make an example of, spank, pet, tap and even seduce. Consulting numerous sources, Bakhtiar settled on “to go away” as the most accurate definition of “daraba":
“[T]hat is what the prophet meant. When the prophet had difficulty with his wives, what did he do? He didn’t beat anybody, so why would any Muslim do what the prophet did not?”
She doesn’t expect her translation to be universally accepted because she is a woman and an American, and is not an Islamic scholar.
The semantic debate is largely symbolic, however, as only Arabic – the language in which G-d revealed the Koran to Mohammad – is considered “authentic.”
Still, some prefer beating a wayward wife to sending her away:
“I am not apologetic about why the Koran says this,” said Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an Islamic scholar who teaches at George Washington University. The Bible, he noted, addresses stoning people to death.
And The Stiletto notes that infidels (that is to say, Christians and Jews) stopped stoning people to death centuries ago, whereas Sharia law permits this barbaric form of punishment, and it used in Islamic countries to this very day.
Day Care = Disruptive Children
The largest and longest-running study of child care in the U.S. has found that keeping a preschooler in a day care center for a year or more was associated with a slight increase in behavior problems in school - regardless of the child’s gender, family income or the quality of the center – and that the effect persisted through the sixth grade. However, the researchers found that the effect could be overcome by “parental guidance.”
The Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a $200 million project financed by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, tracked more than 1,300 children in 10 cities nationwide who either stayed home with a parent; were cared for by a nanny or a relative; or who were enrolled in a large day care center. When the kids started going to school, the researchers used teacher ratings to assess such behaviors as interrupting class, teasing and bullying. Each year spent in such centers for 10 hours or more per week was associated with a 1 percent higher score on a standardized assessment of problem behaviors completed by teachers, study co-author Dr. Margaret Burchinal tells The New York Times. The prospective study began in 1991, and the researchers plan to continue following the children into high school.
Comments