The Women of the Arabs | Page 5

of discovery, the blows and kicks are applied in the most merciless and
barbarous manner. Women are killed in this way, and no outsider
knows the cause. One of my Moslem neighbors once beat one of his
wives to death. I heard her screams day after day, and finally, one night,
when all was still, I heard a dreadful shriek, and blow after blow falling
upon her back and head. I could hear the brute cursing her as he beat
her. The police would not interfere, and I could not enter the house.
The next day there was a funeral from that house, and she was carried
off and buried in the most hasty and unfeeling manner. Sometimes it

happens that the woman is strong enough to defend herself, and
conquers a peace; but ordinarily when you hear a scream in the Moslem
quarter of the city and ask the reason, it will be said to you with an
indifferent shrug of the shoulder, "that is only some man beating his
wife."
That thirty-eighth verse of Sura iv. is one of the many proofs that the
Koran is not the book of God, because it violates the law of love.
"Husbands love your wives," is a precept of the Gospel and not of the
Koran. Yet it is a sad fact that the nominal Christians of this dark land
are not much better in this respect than their Moslem neighbors. The
Greeks, Maronites and Papal Greeks beat their wives on the slightest
provocation. In the more enlightened towns and cities this custom is
"going out of fashion," though still often resorted to in fits of passion.
Sometimes the male relatives of the wife retaliate in case a husband
beats her. In the village of Schwire, in Lebanon, a man beat his wife in
a brutal manner and she fled to the house of her brother. The brother
watched his opportunity; waylaid the offending husband, and avenged
his sister's injuries by giving him a severe flogging. In Eastern Turkey,
a missionary in one of the towns noticed that not one woman attended
church on Sunday. He expostulated with the Protestants, and urged
them to persuade their wives to accompany them. The next Sunday the
women were all present, as meek and quiet as could be wished. The
missionary was delighted, and asked one of the men how they
persuaded them to come? He replied, "We all beat our wives soundly
until they consented to come!" This wife-beating custom has evidently
been borrowed by the Christian sects from their Moslem rulers and
oppressors, and nothing but a pure Christianity can induce them to
abandon it.
III. Some have supposed that there will be no place in the Moslem
Paradise for women, as their place will be taken by the seventy-two
bright-eyed Houris or damsels of Paradise. Mohammed once said that
when he took a view of Paradise he saw the majority of its inhabitants
to be the poor, and when he looked down into hell, he saw the greater
part of the wretches confined there to be women! Yet he positively
promised his followers that the very meanest in Paradise will have

eighty thousand servants, seventy-two wives of the Houris, besides the
wives he had in this world. The promises of the Houris are almost
exclusively to be found in Suras, written at a time when Mohammed
had only a single wife of sixty years of age, and in all the ten years
subsequent to the Hegira, women are only twice mentioned as the
reward of the faithful. And this, while in four Suras, the proper wives
of the faithful are spoken of as accompanying their husbands into the
gardens of bliss.
"They and their wives on that day Shall rest in shady groves." (Sura
36.)
"Enter ye and your wives into Paradise delighted." (Sura 43.)
"Gardens of Eden into which they shall enter Together with the just of
their fathers, and their wives." (Sura 13.)
An old woman once desired Mohammed to intercede with God that she
might be admitted to Paradise, and he told her that no old woman
would enter that place. She burst into loud weeping, when he explained
himself by saying that God would then make her young again.
I was once a fellow-passenger in the Damascus diligence, with a
Mohammedan pilgrim going to Mecca by way of Beirût and Egypt, in
company with his wife. I asked him whether his wife would have any
place in Paradise when he received his quota of seventy-two Houris.
"Yes," said he, looking towards his wife, whose veil prevented our
seeing her, although she could see us, "if she obeys me in all respects,
and is a faithful wife, and goes to Mecca, she will be made more
beautiful than all the