Yet Again Qurʾān 4:34: A Syntax and Semantics-Rhetoric Reading

The qurʾānic passage “… and hit them” (Qurʾān 4:34) causes many modern Muslim believers consternation. They problematise Qurʾān 4:34 and its interpretation for affording husbands a right to exercise violence on women’s bodies. They foreground the verb “hit” in the imperative mood. This article proposes a different approach to reading Qurʾān 4:34. It foregrounds the nouns in the passage, namely husbands and wives, to offer a reading of Qurʾān 4:34 that is fundamentally concerned with the character and behaviour of husbands and wives who think, speak, and behave in everyday life and not giving apparent commands to husband to hit their wives whose nuŝūz they fear. To shift the focus from the action “hit” in the imperative mood to the character of husbands, the article draws on a hermeneutic of ibn ʿArabī that views some prescriptive commands in the Qurʾān not as commands, but rather as statements in the imperative mood.