Try chocolates before beating her

The Herald reports:

A senior Muslim leader has said using violence against women is a “last resort” for men.

President of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils Keysar Trad described beating women as “step three” in a process of dealing with issues in relationships, after counselling and buying chocolates or “taking her out on a dinner”.

So the order is counselling, chocolates, dinner then if that fails violence!

Andrew Bolt elaborates:

Some apologists and relativists have told me that this is just a trick – that they could go through the Bible and find similar sexist passages to quote against Christianity.

First, that is false. Christ preached no such things. In fact, he preached the opposite. Seeing a women being stoned for adultery he saved her by saying: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” He told her that he could not condemn her. He also famously said: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: 39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

In his example and in his preaching he supplanted Old Testament teaching – the “eye for an eye” justice, for instance.

That is the first point. But there is a second equally important one. What the sacred texts of Christianity and Islam say is one thing, but how they are interpreted today by its leading clerics is another.

In the case of wife-beating, Islam’s leading scholars today do not deny the right of men to beat their wives. At best they argue that the Koranic passage above means it must be a last resort. Trad argues it is a last resort that good men will never reach.

But which Pope, cardinal, bishop or moderator or a mainstream Christian church would argue that men have a right – even as a last resort – to beat women? To force her to submit to her husband’s authority?

Basically none in the last few decades.

This is the problem with reforming Islam. The Koran has so many passages that are extremely difficult to explain away, including those purporting to be the words of the founder of the faith himself. This is why Islamic terrorists can do what Christian ones do not: quote the Koran and sacred Hadith to justify what they do – from beheading unbelievers, killing Jews and taking captured women as sex slaves.

Christianity has managed to reform and revise its beliefs. The New Testament itself revises the Old Testament. But neither Testament is seen as the direct word of God, like the Koran is.

That is not to say that this is supported by most Muslims. Not at all. But it does explain why such outrages are met by near silence by leading Muslim scholars. They seem powerless to argue back.

That is slowly changing, though. But the fact remains: the Koran is harder to adapt for a modern, democratic, multicultural and secular society than is the Christian Bible.

Much harder.