The verse people quote at you, and the reports we are holding back

There is a verse that gets read aloud at women in this situation, and there are a handful of reports that get quoted alongside it, about obedience, about a husband's pleasure, and about a wife's refusal.

One of the things that gets quoted has words missing from it, and that part is not interpretation. The report about a woman who asks her husband for divorce and the fragrance of Paradise exists in three separate sound narrations, in Abu Dawud, in Tirmidhi and in Ibn Majah, rendered by three different translators, and every one of them carries a qualifying clause inside the narration. Without some strong reason, in the first. Without harm, in the second. When it is not absolutely necessary, in the third. The version people quote usually has those words left off. That is the whole of the point here, and the course stops there.

This course is not going to argue about any of them with you, and that is deliberate. A course is the wrong place for it, and you are not in a position to run a debate about scriptural interpretation while you are also working out where you would sleep on Thursday. What we will say is this. A major national fatwa body, Egypt's Dar al Ifta, has published in English that beating is not a husband's right, that domestic violence is prohibited, and that laws criminalising it are consistent with Islamic principles. Scholars in the classical tradition also differed, and the honest history is not a single voice.

Those reports are held back on this platform until a named scholar writes a treatment of them. If somebody quotes one at you, you are allowed to say that you will take that question to a scholar of your own choosing, and then take it, once.

The other thing worth knowing is practical. Every school of law provides routes out of a marriage, through khul' and through judicial dissolution on the ground of harm. The routes differ by school, and which one is actually open to you depends on the country and the code you live under. That is a question for a scholar and a lawyer, together, and it is not a question this platform can answer for you.