Muhammad Sanusi II, the Emir of Kano, has revealed that he encourages his daughters to retaliate against their husbands who hit them.
The former Central Bank Governor discussed at the National Dialogue Conference on Gender-Based Violence, focusing on Islamic Teachings and Community Collaboration for Ending Gender-Based Violence.
Sanusi disclosed alarming statistics from his recent research on family law, highlighting that domestic violence and wife battery account for 45% of cases in nine Shari’a courts in Kano over the past five years.
According to him, most instances of domestic violence grossly exceed the permissible limits under Islamic law, where “light beating” is often misinterpreted or abused.
“You can take that verse and say that as a husband, I’ve been given this permission to beat my wife lightly. And nobody will deny that, nobody will say it is haram if you comply with all the rules,” Sanusi said.
“But if you live in a society in which those rules are never applied, nobody who is angry remembers to look for a chewing stick or a handkerchief. They just slap these women, punch them, kick them, and beat them.”
The Emir further criticized the prevalence of unchecked abuse, noting that his analysis revealed no case of “light beating” among the recorded instances of wife battery. “It just does not make sense,” he remarked.
Sanusi explains his personal approach to preparing his daughters for marriage, stating that if their husband slaps them, Sanusi will slap them himself, not for the sake of the marriage.
“When my daughters are getting married, I say to them, if your husband slaps you, and you come home and tell me my husband slapped me, without slapping him back first, I will slap you myself. I did not send my daughter to marry somebody so he can slap her. If you do not like her, send her back to me. But don’t beat her.