Saudi family therapist advises on ‘How to beat your wife’

Courtesy Independent 

A Saudi Arabian family therapist has released a video giving his advice on wife beating.

In the tutorial, Khaled Al-Saqaby says he is “aware that this issue is a thorny one, which contains many hazards”.

He adds: “But Allah willing, we will cross this bridge safely.”

The footage was shot earlier this year then translated and released last month by the Washington DC-based Middle East Media Research Institute.

In the video, Mr Al-Saqaby suggests the aim of beating a wife “is to discipline, not to vent one’s anger”.

“The necessary Islamic conditions for beating must be met,” he stresses.

The family therapist suggests the beating should not be performed with a rod or sharp object, but instead with a tooth-cleaning twig or handkerchief.

He says: “The beating should not be performed with a rod… nor should it be a headband… or a sharp object, which, I am sad to say, some husbands use.

“It should be done with something like the sewak tooth-cleaning twig – or with a handkerchief.”

He explains: “Because the goal is merely to make the wife feel that she was wrong in the way she treated her husband.”

Before beating one’s wife, Mr Al-Saqaby suggests a husband reminds her of “your rights and of her duties, according to Allah”.

He then recommends the husband ignores his wife in bed, by turning his back on her or if he or she sleeps on the floor.

But he suggests the husband does not go to another house, as the point “is to discipline the wife, and not to air your dirty laundry in public”.

Giving the main reasons a man may beat his wife, he says the first is arguments between the wife and her husband.

“Unfortunately, some wives want to live a life of equality with their husband,” he says. “This is a very grave problem.”

Other women make mistakes which may lead their husbands to beat them, he adds.

Mr Al-Saqaby suggests there are some situations where a wife may hit her husband, because of his “faulty upbringing” in which he may have seen his father hit his wife and be “imitating their behaviour”.

He also says he is “sad to say” some women provoke their husbands to beat them.