According to the Quran a Woman Is Never to Be Beaten

Most translators have translated the expression “put them out” or “separate” as “beat”. The word “darabe”, which they render into our language as “beat”, occurs in 58 places in the Quran and has different meanings according to its context.

To travel, to take outside: (Surah Al-Baqarah, 273; Surah Al-Imran, 156; Surah An-Nisa, 101)

To strike: (Surah Al-Baqarah, 60 and 73; Surah Al-A'raf, 160; Surah Al-Anfal, 12; Surah Ta-Ha, 77; Surah As-Saffat, 93)

To beat: (Surah Al-Anfal, 50; Surah Muhammad, 27)

To give an example: (Surah Ibrahim, 24 and 45; Surah An-Nahl, 75, 76 and 112; Surah Al-Kahf, 32 and 45)

To keep away/To separate: (Surah Az-Zukhruf, 5)

To be condemned: (Surah Al-Baqarah, 61)

To close, To strike: (Surah Al-Anfal, 12; Surah Al-Kahf, 11)

To cover: (Surah An-Nur, 31)

To explain: (Surah Ar-Ra'd, 17)

many meanings such as these have all been loaded onto the word “darabe” in the Quran.

The word “darabe” in the verse, which nearly all past translators translated as “beat those women”, some have softened by translating it as “beat a little”, “beat without hurting”, and have offered justifications from sources outside the Quran. Yet in the Arabic of the Quran there is no such meaning as “beat without hurting”. If the word “darabe” means “beat a little without hurting”, then let the same word “darabe”, in the same mood, in Surah Al-Anfal verse 12, mean “Chop off their fingers without hurting at all” or “Strike their necks without hurting at all”. Yes, the verse says “darb those women”. But does this mean beat those women, lay them down, send them away, separate from them, dispatch them, chop them, cover them or make an example of them?

In Arabic, to darb a book means to publish a book. In Arabic the idiom “Darb-ül evvel” means the first creatures. In Arabic, the darblaşma of two people does not mean their fighting each other. On the contrary, it means their becoming partners with one another and setting up a business. Partnerships in which one person darbs his own money and the other darbs only his labour are called darblaşma (Mudaraba) in Arabic. So how can the sentence “darb those women” occurring in this verse of the Quran mean “beat”? In Arabic, is to darb a book to thrash a book, to beat it, so that to darb a woman should mean “beat that woman”? In Arabic, to darb a tent means to set up a tent, not to beat the tent. (The work of the linguist Cengiz Özakıncı named Dünden Bugüne Türklerde, Din ve Dil treats the subjects scientifically. Otopsi Publishing.)

In addition, one of the subjects frequently brought up by certain atheists is, again, that in order for the verb “darabe” to be used other than in the sense of striking, it must take a harf-i cer beside it. Yet there are many examples in the Quran in which the verb darabe is used without taking a harf-i cer, and these uses do not mean beating. In the Quran, in 14:24-45, 16:75-76, 16:112, 13:17 and many more verses, the word “darabe” used without a harf-i cer is used predominantly in the sense of “giving an example”. If we also take verse 13:17, -as one group claims- as “beating” because there is no harf-i cer, the meaning of the verse will be “Allah beats truth and falsehood like this”. As a result, the verb darabe can be used, also without taking a harf-i cer, other than in the sense of beating. Its use in verse 4:34 is of this kind too. In addition, the part occurring in the verse as obedience, طوع, means obedience that comes from the heart, willingly. Obedience by force of beating cannot be obedience that comes from the heart

The most painful and interesting side of the matter is that those who translate the Quran verse as “beat” have, by putting a note immediately beneath it saying “Our Prophet never beat any of his wives, and he advises his community not to beat either”, wanted to make a separation between Allah and the Prophet. “A painful punishment has been prepared for those who want to make a separation between Allah and the Prophets.” (see Surah An-Nisa, 150-151) Supposedly Allah says “beat” the woman and the Prophet says “do not beat”. And those who say this are not ignorant or bigoted people but our well-known scholars. There is nothing to be done about the situation of translators following so dangerous and contradictory a path except to leave it to Allah. May Allah forgive. In the verse there is not the meaning “beat the women” but the expression “put the women out”.