No surprise here. The Qur’an teaches that men are superior to women and should beat those from whom they “fear disobedience”: “Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because Allah has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.” — Qur’an 4:34
Muhammad’s child bride, Aisha, says in a hadith that Muhammad “struck me on the chest which caused me pain, and then said: ‘Did you think that Allah and His Apostle would deal unjustly with you?’” — Sahih Muslim 2127
“Turkish Islamists say laws protecting women threaten the family,” by Dicle Eşiyok, Ahval News, July 15, 2019 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
Turkish Islamists have launched a campaign against a European convention and a domestic law combating violence against women, saying they empower LGBTI groups and aim to destroy the institution of the family.
The heated debate is one a several areas where splits have begun to emerge within the Islamist movement led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, with criticism even reaching a conservative women’s organisation founded by his daughter.
The story begins with the years of abuse suffered by Nahide Opuz after she married in 1995. Her husband battered her, attempted to run her over with his car and stabbed her. The police repeatedly ignored her pleas and allowed her husband to remain at large, until in 2002 he shot her mother dead.
Opuz took Turkey to the European Court of Human Rights, and in 2009 Turkey was convicted for failing to protect her despite her attempts to exercise her legal rights.
The Opuz verdict set a precedent and served as the basis of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence.
Dubbed the Istanbul Convention after the city where it was signed in 2011, the regulation obligates signatories to combat discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as to take precautions against domestic violence, compensate its victims and sentence perpetrators proportionally.
Turkey was the first to ratify the convention, in 2012, and it was soon promoted by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its women’s groups.
The Opuz verdict also led to the 2011 founding of Turkey’s Ministry of Family and Social Policy, which worked with women’s organisations to devise a 2012 law (Law 6284) that aims to protect women and children subject to or threatened with violence.
But in recent weeks, as mainstream Turkish discourse has been gripped by anti-Westernism, many Islamist analysts and politicians have come to see the convention and the law as part of a European conspiracy to erode the integrity of the Turkish family, which has in turn put pressure on Turkey’s LGBTI+ community and those working to curb domestic violence.
Sema Maraşlı, a conservative writer known as a strident opponent of feminism, went so far as to suggest the ratification of the Istanbul Convention had brought forth a “punishment from God” on the AKP after it lost the June 23 Istanbul mayoral election.
Maraşlı’s views are far from unique. Şakir Tarım, a columnist for the Islamist daily Milli Gazete, said the convention was a plot by Europe to “subvert society through women”. Another Islamist columnist, Tayyar Tercan, warned that it would one day lead to the legalisation of gay marriage. Some Islamist columnists went so far to call the convention “women’s terrorism”…