The rib, and the reports we are not going to settle

The report about a woman being like a rib is usually produced to explain that women are bent and need straightening. It is printed below in full, because the half quotation is the thing that does the damage. Read its own conditional. The attempt to straighten breaks her, and breaking her is divorcing her, so the instruction the report issues is to stop straightening. It is an argument for gentleness and it gets quoted as a licence for correction, which is close to the reverse of what it says.

There is other material that circulates in this space, about prostration, about a husband's pleasure, and about a wife's refusal. Some of it is graded good, some of it is graded weak, and all of it is routinely pulled out of its frame. This platform is holding those reports back until a named scholar writes a treatment of them, and we would rather say that than run them and hope.

What qiwamah means, and what it does not, is a serious question in the tradition and scholars have written on it at length. We are not going to settle it for you here, because a course is not a mufti. The one thing that is not in dispute is the last line of the previous step. Obedience is only in what is good.