I am not sure if there is such thing as Extreme Islam.
Oh, considering some of the less than egalitarian values one finds in the bible, I would say that the Koran is NOT condoning abuse towards women..
If anything, it was written in order to restrain the particularly abusive society that ALREADY EXISTED as a result of the hard lives these bedouin Arabs lived.
Islam, although I'm not muslim, was probably was one of the more moderate beliefs and progressive beliefs at the time of its founding. Certainly in comparison with the actions of European christian entities centering around the all-powerful catholic church.
For instance, the Koran forbade the killing of innocents, or unarmed men. It forbade the destruction of towns after a battle had been won.. And they recognized that Islam owed much to the Jews, their fellow descendants of Abraham, and thus was rather tolerant (given the times) of Jews in their society.... Certainly more so than Christians who blamed the Jews for killing Jesus Christ.
So the Koran was a legalistic document that outlined specifically what it meant by disciplining wives and how much force could be used. I look at it as essentially a further amplification on the 10 commandents... and certainly not some form of permission to abuse wives.
Anyone who takes it as such is plainly misinterpreting it for their own evil reasons.
Hawk |
