Timur Kamaev, a prominent Imam from Russia’s republic of Tatarstan, found himself at the center of a nationwide scandal this week after releasing a video in which he appears to instruct believers on the proper ways to beat one’s wife.
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Kamaev, 30, is one of the most high-profile Muslim clerics in Russia and the head of the Irek Mosque located in the heart of Tatarstan’s capital Kazan.
[…] Kamaev aimed to address the question of how believers should interpret the 34th verse in the fourth chapter of the Quran, which speaks on how a man should deal with disloyalty on the part of his wife.
“You should always start with admonition, that is, try to explain to your wife why she is in the wrong. You should always speak to her beautifully and wisely,” said Kamaev.
Next, according to Kamaev, a disobedient wife can be punished by sleeping in separate beds.
“In extraordinary cases,” said Kamaev, “The āyah [verse] suggests beating.”
Beatings, according to the Imam, will allow the woman “to understand that she is doing something wrong” and can be done using a miswak, a teeth-cleaning twig made from the wood of the Salvadora persica tree.
“Gently hit the wife with the miswak a couple of times — but work the arm only from the elbow down, not the entire shoulder joint — with small blows,” said Kamaev.
“The point [of beating] is not to injure the person, not to leave bruises, but to gently say ‘stop, you are doing something wrong, your husband is already unhappy, he already reached the point when he is raising his hand’,” Kamaev continued. “But here we must understand that the terms ‘beating’ and ‘beating up’ mean different things.”
The Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Tatarstan, the region’s highest religious authority, also backed Kamaev, advising his critics to “watch the podcast in its entirety.”
I’ve seen this tactic used before in a more personal setting. The only discord server I’m on had one person who continually posted hate content or content from people known for creating hate content.
Whenever I called out specific parts of a video that were clearly anti-femme hate, they would attempt to pivot the responsibility on to me by telling me I didn’t watch enough the video entirely or that I need to watch more videos to understand why it’s okay to hate.
In this particular case on the discord server, this tactic was used to hide the fact that they did not understand why anti-femme hate was necessary and needed to be spread. They could not put the concept into their own words to show they understood. Instead they expect you to digest more hate content in order to understand concepts that they themselves struggle to understand.
I can’t help but see the same tactic being by the Spiritual Administration to shift responsibility back onto the people creating the justified backlash. The administration offers nothing in the form of transcripts, evidence or supporting arguments and instead expects you to waste your time and energy finding it yourself through a pile of more hate content.
I personally think that this tactic shows just how shallow hate can be. And while my experience with this tactic is limited to one instance on a discord server, I wouldn’t be surprised if other people got a weird, crazy or completely unexpected results if they pressured the hate-supporter/spreader in to verbalizing in their own words the hate they are spreading.
Since hate and hypocrisy are so closely bound together, I assume it would be safe to bet money that if you asked them to watch a video or listen to a podcast that did not advocate for physical violence, the administration or people who watch hate content would not watch or listen to your suggestion. A game they will play that’s as shallow as their hate.