为什么伊斯兰教法会让恶劣的丈夫有机会压迫妻子？

Q: Why does Islamic law make it easy for an evil husband to oppress his wife?.

A：在今天的时代，加上今天的社会结构，以及在一些穆斯林国家中存在的落后文化习俗，一个心怀恶意的丈夫确实可能很容易压迫妻子、休妻、占妻子的便宜、虐待她，等等。但在穆斯林历史的大部分时期，情况并非如此容易。这是因为历史上大多数地方的家庭和社会结构都是以亲族为基础的，即以“大”家庭为基础。在今天的世界里，家庭规模很小、彼此孤立，人们与父母、大家族、亲戚等都没有联系，丈夫压迫妻子很容易；而在过去，妻子可以依靠这些关系网络，在面对压迫性或其他不合理的丈夫时获得支持。事实上，保护家族中的女性免受此类虐待符合家族的最大利益，因为功能失调的家庭无法培养出能够为部落或大家族做出积极贡献的健全子女。守护自己人显然是合乎情理的，有了这样的后盾，女性在面对可能心怀恶意的丈夫时，就不会自动处于事实上的弱势地位。

A: In today’s age and with today’s social structures and some of the backwards cultural practices we find in some Muslim countries, yes, it may be easy for a malevolent husband to oppress his wife, to divorce her, to take advantage of her, to abuse her, and so on. But for most of Muslim history, this was not so easy. This is because the familial and social structure in most places throughout history were kinship based, i.e., based on the “extended” family. While it is easy for a husband to oppress his wife in today’s world, where families are very small and isolated and people have no connection to their parents, extended family, relatives, and so on, in the past, a wife could rely on these networks to support her against an oppressive or otherwise unreasonable husband. In fact, it was in the best interest of the family to defend its female members from such abuse, since dysfunctional families cannot produce functional children who will contribute positively to the tribe or extended family. It just made sense to watch for your own and with that kind of backing, women were not automatically in a position of de facto weakness in the face of a potentially malevolent husband.

如今的现代社会中，女性在面对施暴的丈夫时几乎没有什么可以依靠的途径。女性只能依赖国家机构为她们提供支持，而国家机构并不总能够提供帮助，归根结底，女性被迫依靠冰冷的官僚体系，而过去的家族网络却能够以直接、即时的方式追究施暴丈夫的责任并使其承担后果。历史记录可以证明，这种做法在数千年间一直如此，但现代社会瓦解了大家庭，迫使人们依赖国家（以及企业）的官僚体系。根据伊斯兰对人类存在的看法，大家庭是人类正常生活的重要结构，这一点在伊斯兰教法本身中得到了强调并被视为理所当然。我们东西方的许多社会正遭受这类问题，这一事实应当让我们反思某些现代社会结构的可行性，以及在当今时代瓦解大家庭及其权威的做法。

It is today in modern society that women do not have much recourse against abusive husbands. Women today have to rely on state institutions to provide them support, and obviously state institutions are not always in a position to help, and at the end of the day, women are forced to rely on a cold bureaucratic system whereas family networks of the past could prosecute and hold an abusive husband accountable in a direct and immediate way. As the historical record will attest, this is how things were done for thousands of years, but modern society has dissolved the extended family and forced people to rely on state (and corporate) bureaucracy. The extended family is a crucial structure of functional human living according to Islam’s vision of human existence and this is emphasized in and assumed by the Sharia itself. The fact that many of our societies in the East and West are suffering such problems should tell us something about the viability of certain modern social structures and the dismantling of the extended family and its authority in our time.

“所以真正的问题是：我们应当把伊斯兰教法改造得迎合现代社会的种种教条，而现代社会正深受这些问题之苦？还是应当改革这些社会结构，恢复那些穆斯林与非穆斯林文明数千年来视为理所当然的制度？”

So the real question is, should we reform Islamic law to conform to the diktats of modern society, which is suffering from all these problems, or should we reform these social structures and bring back those institutions that past civilizations, Muslim and non-Muslim, took for granted for thousands of years?