Cultural Relativist Theory

Traditionalists interpreted the verb daraba as “to strike” and this literal reading gives men permission to strike their wives. But daraba has multiple meanings in the Qur’an, including not only to strike, but also to set an example and to separate. Moreover, it is not the darraba which means to strike repeatedly and intensely. Thus, this verse has been interpreted in a discriminatory and misogynistic way to justify the legality of men beating women. Traditionalists argued that a man may beat his wife if he does not receive the obedience and cooperation of his wife. They also see this act as a preventative measure in an unhealthy situation in order to protect the family against collapse. Clearly, the mainstream interpretation of the verse,

Cultural relativist theory is not a strong enough theory to protect human rights. That is because it maintains that human values are not universal, and vary a great deal according to different cultural perspectives. Thus, it ignores, and indeed approves of, human rights violations because it has replaced dominant concepts like race, culture, religion, class, and ethnicity or nationality. Activists of human rights must work together to change and stop such harmful and discriminatory practices in many cultures against human rights by promoting their universal nature. In the second part, I argued that Islam (the Qur’an and Sunnah) is not oppressive to women. Rather, their patriarchal traditional interpretations are oppressive, which were interpreted in terms of men 's vision and desire. These interpretations tended to endorse gender inequality and discrimination against women. Hence, re-interpretive approaches of the religious text from a female perspective are needed for conceptualizing and establishing new guidelines for traditional Islam. Therefore, I have advocated modern re-interpretive approach from females’ perspective, through engaging in ijthad, in order to challenge traditional interpretations of Islamic principles. Firstly, the historical contextualization: this method involves “researching the occasion of a verse’s revelation.” This means to contextualize the verse and understand the occasions (asbabal-nuzul) in which the verse was revealed. Secondly, the analysis of each Quranic verse, within its contextual constraints, in light of similar language, syntactical and grammatical structures used elsewhere in the Qur 'an. The third one is to read the Qur’an holistically through reexamining the meaning of isolated words instead of reading it verse by verse. This