Question:

Q62 Host: Would you discuss the two different standards for divorce and marriage, and kindness to our fellow man in the Koran and the Bible?

Dr. Labib: In Islam, they believe in polygamy. The man has the right to marry four women at one time. Of course you can divorce the four women, and then again marry another four women. And divorce these four women, and marry another four women, according to his wish and according to his will. Even so, I would like to say clearly that educated Muslim women do not like at all this kind of permission to the Muslim husbands. They do not like it at all! And you read it in the newspaper again, and again. When an educated woman will marry a man, she will never accept that her husband will go and marry another woman except her. Practically, the Koran is against human nature. That's one thing.

Number two, the Koran permits the husband to beat his wife, and there are lots of beatings of women legally, and I repeat, legally in Islam. And a verse in the Koran says that if you fear rebellion from women, banish them in bed, that means don't have sex with her as a punishment, and then beat them. In fact, in one of the translations, 'scourge' them. You can imagine. So if a Muslim man beats his wife, he would not feel guilty because the Koran permits him to do that. Those are some examples concerning polygamy, marrying more than one wife and the treatment of wife.

Of course, when you come to the Bible, you read the words of apostle Paul, "Men love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her." Do you see the difference? Love is a sacrificial gift. In the Koran it says "beat your wife, banish her in bed." Two different standards. Then, when you come to inheritance in the Koran, the woman, the daughter will inherit half of what the son receives. If you have a son and a daughter, the son will have a full inheritance. The daughter will have only half of what your son will have. And then you go and see that you are forced to obey the husband in such a humiliating way, because there is a verse in the Koran that says, "Your women are till for you, so approach your till any time you want." What does that mean? It means that the wife is totally under the control of the husband. If he wants sex in the morning, at midnight, at noon, anytime, he just orders her. If she is tired, she is not tired, there is no excuse. You, the wife of the Muslim, are under total control. She has no control on the body of her husband. But if you go to [1 Corinthians chapter 7], you read that the woman doesn't have authority over her body, but the husband. The husband doesn't have authority over his body but the wife, so it is equivalent. So the wife should satisfy the husband, the husband should satisfy the wife. In Islam it's not that way, the man is satisfied, the woman it doesn't make a difference. So you see the standard.
In divorce, the Muslim man has the right to divorce. The Muslim woman doesn't have this right, unless she writes in the marriage certificate that she has the right to divorce her husband. That will never happen, but only with the high-ranking people, very rich. Now, when someone will come to marry a very rich girl, they will state in the certificate that she has the right to divorce her husband. If that is the case, then if he will treat her badly, she can divorce him. Otherwise, the majority of women, 99% I would say, they don't have the right to divorce their husbands, but the husband has the right. And I read yesterday, just yesterday a story about a woman who was engaged to a man, who claimed to be an engineer while he was only a graduate from the preparatory school. And she got married, but they didn't enter into real marriage. And then, someone came and told her father that this man was not an engineer as he claimed. He only had a very low education. And the girl was a university graduate, and she said, "No, I am not going to marry him. I married him as an engineer." Four years in court until she got her divorce. It took four years in court, because only he has the right to divorce. After he wrote the marriage certificate, they encountered him, they said, "You are not an engineer." He said, "No." "You lied to us." He said, "Yes." "Then you have to divorce our daughter. She is not going to marry you." He said, "No way. I am going to marry her if you want or not." It took four years in court until they got the permission to divorce him.

So this is Islam, polygamy, divorce, the rights of the man. Beating is the right of the man. The woman is only a sex object. And that's it. Nobody can deny that because the Koran says all of this. If someone would say, "Oh, no, it's not that way." The verses in the Koran, verse after verse, after verse declare what I have said, it is all documented, fully documented.

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