"Only from the elbow, with small blows." Imam from Kazan criticized for instructions on how to "beat" a wife

Kazan Imam Timur Kamayev has faced criticism after a podcast in which he talked about how to "beat your wife." The Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Tatarstan responded to the criticism by saying that the press had misinterpreted the imam's words.

In a podcast released by the Tatar-inform agency, the imam-khatib of the Kazan mosque "Irek" Timur Kamaev explained how to interpret the passage from the fourth surah of the Koran, which talks about "beating" a wife, and discussed why such measures should be taken. The imam stated that "there is a gradation" of methods of influencing a spouse, the Kommersant newspaper writes. According to Timur Kamaev, you should first try to come to an agreement, and if this does not help, then you can resort to "separating the sleeping bed."

The last method of influence the imam named was "beating", and in the Muslim environment, according to Timur Kamaev, one can use miswak - a stick for cleaning teeth. He also stated that if a man swung at his wife, he should not use the shoulder joint: "Carefully hit the wife a couple of times with miswak. The hand works only from the elbow - that is, the shoulder joint does not work completely, but from the elbow with small blows. The point is not to injure the person, not to leave bruises, but to carefully make the person understand: "Stop, you are doing it wrong" - and that the husband is already unhappy and has reached the point where he is already raising his hand." In addition, the imam emphasized that there is a difference between "beating" and "beating": the latter violates the rights of the wife and is prohibited in Islam.

This excerpt was widely distributed among publics and the media, and later the Tatar-inform agency issued a statement in which it accused journalists of taking Timur Kamaev's words out of context. In addition, the agency issued a publication in which it spoke of the inadmissibility of violence.

The Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Tatarstan stated that in order to correctly evaluate the words, one must listen to the entire podcast, but this is currently problematic: the podcast has been removed from the Tatar-inform agency website.