The Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II, has revealed that he encourages his daughters to retaliate if their husbands hit them.
Speaking at the National Dialogue Conference on Gender-Based Violence (GBV) prevention from an Islamic perspective, themed ‘Islamic Teachings and Community Collaboration for Ending Gender-Based Violence,’ Sanusi highlighted the prevalence of domestic violence in Kano.
Sanusi disclosed that domestic violence and wife battery account for 45 percent of cases in nine Shari’a courts in Kano over the past five years. He stated that he advises his daughters on this matter when they are getting married.
“You can take that verse and say that as a husband, I’ve been given this permission to beat my wife lightly. And nobody will deny that, nobody will say it is haram if you comply with all the rules. But if you live in a society in which those rules are never applied, nobody who is angry remembers to look for a chewing stick or a handkerchief,” Sanusi explained.
He continued, “They just slap these women and punch them and kick them and beat them. I just wrote a doctorate thesis on family law, and I researched nine Shari’a courts in Kano. 41% of the cases over a five-year period had to do with maintenance. 26 percent had to do with harm. And out of those, 45 percent were cases of wife beating or domestic violence. And when we go to the content analysis, not one case of wife beating was light beating.”
Sanusi emphasized his stance, saying, “It just does not make sense. Now I said it before, and I know I’ve been attacked for it, and I’ll continue saying it. When my daughters are getting married, I say to them, if your husband slaps you, and you come home and tell me my husband slapped me, without slapping him back first, I will slap you myself because I did not send my daughter to marry somebody so he can slap her. If you do not like her, send her back to me. But don’t beat her.”
