Timur Kamaev, a prominent Imam from Russia’s republic of Tatarstan, found himself at the center of a nationwide scandal this week after releasing a video in which he appears to instruct believers on the proper ways to beat one’s wife.
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Kamaev, 30, is one of the most high-profile Muslim clerics in Russia and the head of the Irek Mosque located in the heart of Tatarstan’s capital Kazan.
[...] Kamaev aimed to address the question of how believers should interpret the 34th verse in the fourth chapter of the Quran, which speaks on how a man should deal with disloyalty on the part of his wife.
“You should always start with admonition, that is, try to explain to your wife why she is in the wrong. You should always speak to her beautifully and wisely,” said Kamaev.
Next, according to Kamaev, a disobedient wife can be punished by sleeping in separate beds.
“In extraordinary cases,” said Kamaev, “The āyah [verse] suggests beating.”
Beatings, according to the Imam, will allow the woman “to understand that she is doing something wrong” and can be done using a miswak, a teeth-cleaning twig made from the wood of the Salvadora persica tree.
“Gently hit the wife with the miswak a couple of times — but work the arm only from the elbow down, not the entire shoulder joint — with small blows,” said Kamaev.
“The point [of beating] is not to injure the person, not to leave bruises, but to gently say ‘stop, you are doing something wrong, your husband is already unhappy, he already reached the point when he is raising his hand’,” Kamaev continued. “But here we must understand that the terms ‘beating’ and ‘beating up’ mean different things.”