Woman Between Islam and Western Society
4. The Problems Facing Modern Civilization
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my own business. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I
don’t chase other women.” In spite of all such
contrary indications, he repeatedly beat his wife.
Reader’s Digest
gives many instances of wife-beating
by Americans in an article entitled, “Why Men Hurt
the Women They Love.” According to one survey,
in America a woman is battered by a husband or
boy- friend every 18 seconds. And every year, it is
estimated that more than a million of these need
medical help. Every day, four die.
14
Why should the developed and civilized society of
America be infested with the evil of wife-beating? A
great deal of research has been done on this subject
and its findings have been put in a nutshell by Mrs.
Susan Schechter, a researcher at the Women’s
Educational Institute in New York, when she writes,
in her book,
Women and Male Violence:
“It is a
pattern of coercive control.” Ellen Pence, Director of
the Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs says,
“Any batterer can tell you why he hit her. He
wanted control over her. He wanted his way.”
15
The above statements underline the state of affairs
which has resulted from modem western