-Jihad for Love will receive its UK premiere at the Sheffield Documentary festival, which runs from November 7-11
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gayrights/story/0,,2163209,00.html
Filmed over 5 1/2 years, in 12 countries with varying degrees of tolerance, "A Jihad for Love" is a global story of some gay Muslims.

-Couple in same sex marriage ordered to part
4/09/07
(Article fromMalaysia's, New Strait Times at http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Tuesday/National/20070904082913/Article/index_html)
MALACCA: The couple arrived in court together in a Perodua Kancil, wearing matching yellow attire, and looked calm when the judgment was read to them. Three months short of their fifth wedding anniversary, a couple has been ordered to part as the husband was actually a woman.
Syariah judge Che Saufi Che Husin yesterday ordered a farak (part forever) between Mohd Sufian Mohamad, 40, and Zaiton Aziz, 43, as the marriage was not legitimate under syariah. They walked out of court together and left in the same car.

Sufian, 40, whose birth certificate bears the name Mazinah Mohamad, married Zaiton Aziz, 43, in December 2002.

They were alleged to have committed same-sex marriage and were charged under section 11 of the Malacca Islamic Family Enactment 2002.

The marriage, solemnised by imam Ishak Juki from the Bukit Cina mosque, had been deemed legal as all procedures had been adhered to.

However, problems surfaced a few months later when the Malacca Religious Affairs Department refused to register the marriage after becoming suspicious of the bridegroom’s gender.

Sufian was also ordered to amend his gender status and name in the National Registration Department according to the original birth certificate.

In announcing his ruling, Che Saufi said: "According to the first respondent’s (Zaiton) statement, she had never seen or touched her husband’s private parts and had taken him to be a man all along and that she felt good and satisfied together.

"This is astounding and illogical. It is abnormal to go through life as husband and wife as such."

He said the couple had also failed to prove the "husband" to be a hermaphrodite as claimed by Syariah lawyer Mohd Mokhtar Karim.

Malacca Hospital gynaecologist Dr Nor Hasinah Mohd Said had said a physical examination carried out with two other specialists revealed that Sufian was not a man.

Chromosome and blood tests also confirmed that Sufian was a woman.

-First Association for People Living with HIV in Pakistan
24/8/07
http://www.unaids.org/en/MediaCentre/PressMaterials/FeatureStory/20070824_Association_PLHIV_Pakistan.asp
A new national initiative from UNAIDS in Pakistan aims to ensure that communities and the government listen to the experts - people living with HIV - when making decisions about treatment, care, support and prevention.

Twenty-four year old Masood is the newest recruit to one of UNAIDS’ latest initiatives: the“Association of People Living with HIV and AIDS in Pakistan”.

The association was launched on World AIDS Day 2006 with the support of UNAIDS and its UN co-sponsors, and the Pakistan government. The aim is to make sure that people living with HIV are consulted when decisions about prevention, treatment, care and support are taken at federal and provincial level.

In keeping with the principle of greater involvement of people living with HIV, all the executive board members of the association are HIV positive. Now, it is establishing the first network among people living with HIV in Pakistan to provide a platform for them to speak in unison.

“In my experience, most HIV positive people here have difficulty conveying their needs, often because of poverty and because the literacy rate is low and information provided is limited,” says Masood.

“Here in Pakistan HIV is not seen as a priority and people have many issues surrounding their treatment, care and support, stigma and discrimination and society’s attitudes.” Stigma and discrimination is specifically associated with children and women from rural areas of Pakistan. These women have been infected by their husbands; most of them were migrant workers who have been deported by certain countries without being told about their HIV positive status.

The Association has already begun to bring the small number of NGOs and self-help groups together. The objective is to provide training in leadership skills and health information, including adherence to anti-retroviral treatment.

With a Masters in Business Administration from University in Lahore, Masood is working with them to organize themselves strategically, to develop policies and to raise funds.

There has been a three-day workshop on capacity building already, focusing on the issues for people living with HIV in Pakistan and how to operate an effective positive self-help group. Another two-day workshop focused on HIV literacy helped pre-testing and collecting feed back on the newly developed booklets and other information materials produced in Urdu and English for people living with HIV (PLHIV).

UNAIDS will be supporting more workshops across the country and is planning to do this activity in collaboration with Association of PLHIV, provincial and federal Government and civil society organizations working on AIDS issues.

“We aim to contribute to improving people’s lives, give them a sense of belonging, political empowerment and strength of spirit,” says Masood.

At the same time the Association aims to contribute to the national goal – to “prevent a generalized epidemic in Pakistan by containing the spread of HIV and AIDS and elimination of stigma and discrimination against those infected and affected” .

The country's epidemic is concentrated and intensifying. Pakistan has one of the highest rates of injection drug use in the world (4.5 per capita per annum), and 64% of injecting drug users report use of non-sterile needles. Frequent use and reuse of unsterilized and contaminated needles contributes to a high transmission rate of HIV among injecting drug users (10%). The World Health Organisation and UNAIDS estimate the actual prevalence may be as high as 85,000 (46 000- 210 000).

During the Launching ceremony of Association of PLHIV in 1 st December, 2006 Dr. Aldo Landi, UNAIDS Country Coordinator said:

“This is the first step as a breakthrough in the fight against stigma and discrimination”. He further expressed the need of involvement of PLHIV at both federal and provincial level. Most importantly PLHIV should be treated in full respect of human rights.

Masood is a hemophiliac who contracted HIV through infected blood. In Pakistan, about 50 per cent of blood products are screened for HIV before blood transfusion – and 1.5 million blood bags are transfused every year. About 18 per cent of people living with HIV in Pakistan were infected in this way.

“I have spent many years of my life for humanity,’” says Masood, who has campaigned for better treatment for hemophiliacs and as a volunteer, running a UNICEF funded project for a Lahore based PLHIV NGO, before joining UNAIDS.

“I am very ambitious because I am facing and feeling the pain,”says Masood. “I want to make a real difference by encouraging people living with HIV to realize how important it is for them to be involved at every level.

“They themselves will bring about change. I am happy to be the first drop of rain.”

-Gay Community Thrives in Lebanon
by Shereen Meraji http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12032071
17/7/07
Homosexuality is forbidden in most of the Arab world, and is against the law in Lebanon. But the gay community is quietly flourishing in Beirut, and some young Lebanese are hoping to spark a dialogue about homosexuality in their country.

-BBC Asian Network Radio- Report: God Knows I'm Gay
9/07/'07 Listen here... http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/asiannet_aod.shtml?asiannet/asiandoc_godknowsimgay
Bindya Solanki talks to young gay Asians about their troubles and triumphs looking for love.

-Jeg er lesbik muslim og jeg eksisterer
Norwegian article on the Safra Project.
4/11/06

-Bail for Pakistan 'same-sex' pair
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6249566.stm
28/06/07
Pakistan's Supreme Court has ordered that a couple jailed for perjury in a row over the husband's sex should be released on bail, their lawyers say.

The ruling came after a judge agreed to hear appeals against the convictions.

The couple say they are man and wife, but the Lahore high court ruled last month that the husband was, in fact, a woman, despite sex-change surgery.

The case is thought the first of its kind in Pakistan where homosexuality and trans-sexuality are largely taboo.

'Lied'
Shumail Raj, 31, had sex-change surgery to become a man and then married Shahzina Tariq, 24, a cousin.

She was aware of his condition but says she needed his help to avoid being forced into wedlock with someone else.

The couple originally sought the protection of the courts but were arrested last month after the bride's family questioned whether Raj was a man.

Judges in Lahore jailed the couple for three years and fined them 10,000 Pakistani rupees ($165).

They found that the couple had lied about Raj's sexual status and said their marriage was un-Islamic because it was same-sex.

But on Thursday, the couple's lawyers said the judgement of the high court had been suspended

"The Supreme Court has ordered their release," said lawyer Babar Awan, Reuters news agency reports.

Bail is reported to have been set at 50,000 rupees ($825) each.

No date has been given for the appeal hearing to begin.

'Against Islam'
Raj is reported to have undergone surgery twice in Pakistan over the past 16 years to become a man.

But tests carried out by doctors on behalf of the Lahore high court ruled that Raj, who has a beard and moustache, was still a woman.

Raj himself says that he needs to go abroad for more treatment even though his breasts and uterus have been removed.

Ms Tariq's family wants to annul the wedding on the grounds that it is against Islam for two women to marry.

But the couple argue that they married to protect the bride from being sold into marriage to pay off her uncle's gambling debts.

Ms Tariq says they are not homosexuals and they married because they are in love.

-Pakistan 'same-sex' couple jailed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6697527.stm

-Muslims are not required to cover up
http://www.muslimwakeup.com/main/archives/2007/04/muslims_are_not_1.php
BY FARZANA HASSAN and TAREK FATAH
24/4/07
Originally a source of modesty, the hijab, or Muslim head scarf, has become a political tool. Its latest manifestation came this week with the sight of 10-year old Muslim girls refusing to give up their hijab in a Quebec tae kwon do tournament, when the helmets would have served the same purpose of modesty and much more.

All Canadian women have, at some time in their lives, chosen to wear a head cover. In blinding snow storms or freezing rain, the covering of the head, irrespective of what religion one practises, is crucial to one's survival. Halfway across the world, in the deserts of Arabia, whether one was a Muslim or a pagan, the covering of one's head and face was an absolute necessity -- not just when facing a blistering sandstorm, but any time one stepped out of the home in the searing sun. What was essentially attire for a particular climate and weather has been turned into a modern symbol of defiance and, at best, a show of piety by Islamists and orthodox Muslims.

There is not a single reference in the Koran that obliges Muslim women to cover their hair or their face. The only verse that comes close to such a dress code (Sura 24, "The Light," verse 31) directs believing women to let their head coverings obscure their bosoms.

Yet, in the past few decades, Islamists and orthodox Muslims have made the covering of a woman's head the cornerstone of Muslim identity. The head cover been pushed as a symbol of piety and only the Egyptian and Saudi version of the head cover -- the hijab -- is considered worthy of respect. Coverings that originate in South Asia, the sari or the dupatta, have been relegated as less authentic under Islam.

It is true that through history, Muslim women have chosen to wear the hijab for reasons of modesty. Today, however, some wear it for the opposite reason. "Young women put on a hijab and go dancing, wearing high heels and lipstick. They wear tight jeans that show their bellies," 75-year old Nawal Al-Saadawi, Egypt's leading feminist, noted recently. She is bitter at how the covering of a women's head has been misrepresented as an act of piety and the most defining symbol of Islam.

Beyond fashion, however, this supposed symbol of modesty has assumed a decidedly political and religious tenor, dominating the debate on civil liberties and religious freedoms in the West. Any opposition to the hijab is viewed as a manifestation of Islamophobia.

This was the argument when young Asmahan Mansour was barred from a soccer league in Quebec, as she refused to remove her hijab while playing the sport. Quebec's electoral officer recently moved to disallow fully veiled Muslim women from voting, as they would not be able to identify themselves adequately.
The piece of cloth becomes a subject of controversy also because those who favour its use claim it is religiously mandated and regard its use as their Charter-protected right. To dispense with the garment while playing a sport would amount to committing a sacrilege.

An inquiry into historical precedent, however, suggests the Koran does not mandate the hijab at all.

It should be noted that the khimar, a head scarf that predated the hijab, was worn by Arab women before the Koran's stipulations on modesty of dress and demeanour. Verse 24:31 did not introduce the garment, but modified its use when it said that Muslim women should "wear their head-coverings over their bosoms" -- previously, they were left bare, although decked with jewellery and ornaments.

The intent of the verse was to exhort believing women to cover their nakedness rather than their hair, which was left partially uncovered even though the khimar was a head dress. Moreover, the khimar was never rooted in religious precept -- it was rooted in custom. Modifications for its use were introduced into Islamic practice when the religion spread into Byzantine and Persian territories, where once again the head dress was prevalent as a social custom.

The khimar was also a symbol of class and distinction rather than of religion precept in pre-Islamic and early Islamic history. Indeed, there existed a hierarchy of sorts where slave women were actually barred from veiling. Omar bin Khattab, Islam's second caliph, for example, ordered harsh treatment to slave women who donned the veil. Surely, if the veil was based on religious precept, its use would not be enforced so selectively.

Therefore, to turn the hijab or khimar into a religious and political issue belies its original intent. Muslim women who so vociferously defend its religious use should consider its history before determining whether they must wear it.

Islamists have turned the hijab into the central pillar of Islam. They consider Muslim women who do not cover their heads -- the vast majority -- as sinners or lesser Muslims. They should come out and debate the issue rather than using young Muslim girls as shields to pursue a political agenda.

This essay was originally published in The Globe and Mail.Com
------------------------------------
Farzana Hassan, president of the Muslim Canadian Congress, is author of Islam, Women and the Challenges of Today.

Tarek Fatah, a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, is author of Chasing a Mirage: An Islamic State or a State of Islam, to be published next year.

-Progressive Muslim Pamela K. Taylor Supports LGBT Muslim Rights
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/pamela_k_taylor/2007/03/gay_people_are_people_like_any.html
11/4/07

" On Faith" panelist Pamela K. Taylor is co-founder of Muslims for Progressive Values and director of the Islamic Writers Alliance. She is a member of the national board of advisors to the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and served as co-chair of the Progressive Muslim Union for two years. Taylor is a strong supporter of the woman imam movement, which seeks the full participation of Muslim women in every aspect of life, including the pulpit. In July 2005, she became the first woman in centuries to officiate Friday prayers in a mosque when the United Muslim Association of Toronto and the Muslim Canadian Congress invited her to serve as guest imam. (This event followed a number of services, sermons and prayer sessions led by women held in private venues because no mosque agreed to host them.) In February 2006, when the former Grand Mufti of Marseilles visited Toronto, he requested that Taylor lead him in congregational prayer as an unequivocal demonstration of his support for female imams. Taylor has also been active in interfaith dialogue for 20 years, both in local initiatives and speaking at numerous conferences, universities, and churches. She received her MTS from Harvard Divinity School, and writes regularly on spiritual matters and the Islamic faith. She has essays in Nurturing Child and Adolescent Spirituality: Perspectives from the World's Religious Traditions (2006) and the forthcoming The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics (2007). She has written hundreds of articles and opinion pieces for newspapers, magazines, and journals, and is an award winning poet.

Gay People are People Like Anyone Else
In my mosque, we don't have a single imam, but rather the sermon is delivered by different people from week to week. I don't go to the imam of the week and ask, "Are you Arab or Indian? Syrian or Lebanese? African American or Somali? Did your parents hail from Karachi, Kabul, or Kerala?"

Rather, I listen to the sermon to see if this is a person I can learn from, a person who can inspire me to strengthen my commitment to living a life of decency and piety.

If these accidents of birth – race and ethnicity – are of no import to me, then why should another accident of birth – heterosexual or homosexual – make any difference?

If a gay man has a profound connection to his faith, deep knowledge, and a way with words and rhetoric that can inspire me to be a better Muslim, then of course I would be delighted to listen to his sermon and to pray behind him. Orientation has nothing to do with the matter.

Most Muslims believe that homosexual acts are a sin. Many believe that simply the fact of being gay is a sin. I disagree. The Qur'an, like the Bible, has passages about the people of Sodom. Two things are apparent from the story. First, it is a story of intended rape – the men who come forth from Sodom intend to have their way with Lot's guests regardless of whether they want to or not.

But more than that, it is a story of a town where orientation has been turned on its head. Men who are naturally heterosexual have abandoned their wives in favor of fulfilling their desires with men. Much as men in Afghanistan commonly take young male lovers as a sign of status -- whether or not either or both of them are heterosexual -- so too the people of Lot had wholesale abandoned their natural proclivities.

That, I can see, is a perversion of nature. It says nothing, however, about men who do not have those proclivities to begin with.

Similarly, there is a narration from the collections of Hadith in which the companions of the Prophet, having been away from their wives for an extended period of time during a military campaign, asked if it was okay to fulfill their sexual desires with one another. The Prophet said no.

Again, it's clear to me that these were heterosexual men, men with families and children, and the Prophet told them not to act against that nature. It doesn't say anything about men whose nature is to be attracted to other men rather than women.

The Qur'an does mention such men – men who lack the masculine talent – in a verse which talks about women's dress. Women are advised to be modest, and to draw their scarves across their chests in public. This is followed by a list of exceptions – your father, your brother, your nephews. Included in that list are men who lack the masculine skill.

That the Qur'an makes casual mention of such men in a list of other, presumably straight men, speaks to me of acceptance of homosexuality as a natural state at a profound level.

Further, in one narration from the Prophet's life, we learn that his wives were in the habit of visiting with one such man in their inner chambers. When the Prophet overheard him describing a woman's body in detail to a straight man who might be interested in marrying her, he advised them that they should treat him like a heterosexual male.

Clearly, it was not friendship with a gay man that was at issue, but rather that he had a loose tongue and no compunction against describing private parts of a woman's body.

Those Muslims who believe that being gay or acting upon gay impulses is a sin would have big problems with an openly gay imam, but I see no issue. And it is the Qur'an and the example of my Prophet that lead me to believe there is no issue.

On the issue of gay marriage, I have various overlapping and reinforcing thoughts.

The Qur'an is quite adamant that there is to be no coercion in religion. It is not for me to impose my morality on you. Even the Prophet is told over and over that his job was not to force compliance, but to deliver a message.

This is why I believe Islam was never intended to be used to formulate state or national law after the death of the Prophet. It's why I believe in secularism. More importantly, if even the Prophet could not impose Islamic morality on others, if the Qur'an clearly states there shall be no coercion in religion, then how can we allow some to force their morality on others?

Those who believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman are trying to impose their morality on the entirety of society. Those who advocate for the legality of gay or lesbian marriage are not forcing anyone into a same-sex marriage, nor are they forcing a member of the clergy who does not believe in same-sex marriage to perform their wedding ceremony. They are simply asking that they be allowed to follow their consciences the same as everyone else does.

I do not see how we can justify denying them freedom of conscience, even if we may happen to believe it is a sin. It is between them and God, just as your actions are between you and God, and my actions are between me and God.

Further, in a secular society my liberty ends at the tip of your nose. That is, so long as my actions do not harm others, then I am free to do as I please. Gay marriage in no way threatens anyone.

Gays aren't seeking to end straight marriage. Seeing my two male or female neighbors in a loving, mutually supportive relationship in no way threatens my own marriage. Homosexuality isn't catching, like a disease; my children will be heterosexual or homosexual on their own right, not because they observed two women or two men in love. As such, I can have no objection, from a secular point of view.

Finally, the Qur'an clearly discusses marriage with the assumption that the marriage partners are male and female. It does not address marriage where both spouses are of the same sex. One canonical position throughout the history of Islam has been that whatever is not expressly forbidden is permissible.

Following that position, one could argue that same-sex marriage is allowed, since the Qur'an has not forbidden it.

Of course, most Muslims would argue that the Qur'anic view of marriage is not just an assumption that pertains to the vast majority of humankind, but that it is normative. I find no reason to believe that is the case.

The Qur'an also assumes that men will be the breadwinners of the family, but that does not mean it forbids women from being the breadwinners. Indeed, for the first thirteen years of Muhammad's career as a Prophet, he was supported by his wife's wealth.

Clearly the assumptions about men being the wage earner do not mean that men must be the wage earner, or that women cannot be the wage earner, but rather is a recognition that in most families throughout the course of history this has been the set up. So too, same-sex marriage.

All of these – my understanding of freedom of conscience within Islam, of secularism as inspired by that freedom of conscience, of what is forbidden and what is allowed, and of how the Qur'an relates to normative values – all of these lead me to believe that it is not my business to forbid same-sex marriage.

Finally, there is the issue of sin. Islam clearly says that sexual relations outside of marriage – be it premarital or extra-marital – are a sin. I find it hard to condemn an entire subset of humanity, who God created to be as they are, to either a life of celibacy (which the Prophet clearly discouraged) or a life of sin.

The Prophet said we are not true believers until we want for our brothers and sisters what we want for ourselves. I want a satisfying, committed, loving relationship with my spouse. How could I want to deny that to anyone?

-Arab lesbians hold rare public meeting
Posted by: "rasheedaas"
By DIAA HADID, Associated Press Writer (03-28) 13:40 PDT HAIFA, Israel (AP)
28/3/07 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GSN/message/35088
Arab lesbians quietly defied Islamist protesters and a social taboo to gather at a rare public event Wednesday in a northern Israeli city.

Many of the attendees said they were sad that the only place safe enough to hold a conference for gay Arab women was in a Jewish area of Haifa, which has a mixed Arab-Jewish population. Israel's Jewish majority is generally tolerant of homosexuality.

"This conference is being held, somehow, in exile, even though it's our country," said Yussef Abu Warda, a playwright.

Driven deep underground for the most part, only 10 to 20 Arab lesbians attended the conference, organizers said. Most blended in with Israeli lesbians and heterosexual Arab female supporters without making their presence known.

"We'd like all women to come out of the closet that's our role. We work for them," said Samira, 31, a conference organizer who came with her Jewish Israeli girlfriend. Samira agreed to be identified only by her first name for fear of reprisals.

Outside the conference hall, 20 women protesters in headscarves and long, loose robes held up signs reading, "God, we ask you to guide these lesbians to the true path."

Security was tight. Attendance was by invitation only, and reporters were not allowed to take photographs, use tape recorders or identify people.

Israel's secular metropolis, Tel Aviv, is home to a thriving gay community. Jerusalem, with its large proportion of Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews, is strongly anti-gay.

Homosexuality, which is strictly forbidden by Islam, is considered taboo among most of Israel's Arab citizens, who make up 20 percent of the country's population.

Poetry readings, music and Arab women rappers entertained the conference, called "Home and Exile in Queer Experience," organized by Aswat, an organization for Arab lesbians with members in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"We are here to say they (Arab lesbians) are not alone," said Rawda Morcos, Aswat's spokeswoman, one of a tiny minority of Arab women who are openly gay.

Morcos said her car was vandalized repeatedly and she received threatening phone calls at her family home after her village in northern Israel found out she was a lesbian.

Even rapper Nahwa Abdul Aal, who performed for the gathering, didn't support it.

"Being at this conference hasn't changed my mind," she said. "I still think it's wrong."

Samira, who has a dozen brothers and sisters, said she told a sibling she was gay two years ago. The news quickly spread among the family, and her 70-year-old mother fell into a depression, begging her daughter to change her ways.

But she eventually accepted her daughter's homosexuality "in her own way," by packing large boxes of food for Samira whenever she came to visit.

"My mother said, 'take the food, for you and your girlfriend'," Samira recalled, agreeing to be identified only by her first name for fear of reprisals.

Some of her family never came around. A pregnant sister told Samira she would "never touch her children."
---------On the Web: www.aswatgroup.org/english/

-USA: First translation of the Qur'an by an American woman prompts debate on Qur'anic verse
27/03/07 http://wluml.org/english/newsfulltxt.shtml?cmd[157]=x-157-552246
" Laleh Bakhtiar had already spent two years working on an English translation of the Koran when she came upon Chapter 4, Verse 34. She nearly dropped the project right then." (New York Times)

The hotly debated verse states that a rebellious woman should first be admonished, then abandoned in bed, and ultimately “beaten” — the most common translation for the Arabic word “daraba” — unless her behavior improves.

“I decided it either has to have a different meaning, or I can’t keep translating,” said Ms. Bakhtiar, an Iranian-American who adopted her father’s Islamic faith as an adult and had not dwelled on the verse before. “I couldn’t believe that God would sanction harming another human being except in war.”

Ms. Bakhtiar worked for five more years, with the translation to be published in April. But while she found a way through the problem, few verses in the Koran have generated as much debate, particularly as more Muslim women study their faith as an academic field.

“This verse became an issue of debate and controversy because of the ethics of the modern age, the universal notions of human rights,” said Khaled Abou El Fadl, an Egyptian-born law professor and Islamic scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The leader of the North American branch of a mystical Islamic order, Sheik Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, said he had been questioned about the verse in places around the world where women were struggling for greater rights, but most of all by Westerners. Women want to be free “from some of the extreme ideology of some Muslims,” the sheik said, after delivering a sermon on the verse recently in Oakland, Calif.

[In Germany last week, a judge citing the verse caused a public outcry after she rejected the request for a fast track divorce by a Moroccan-German woman because her husband beat her. The judge, removed from the case, had written that the Koran sanctioned physical abuse.]

There are at least 20 English translations of the Koran. “Daraba” has been translated as beat, hit, strike, scourge, chastise, flog, make an example of, spank, pet, tap and even seduce.

“Spank?” exclaimed Professor Abou El Fadl, who has concluded that the verse refers to a rare public legal procedure that ended before the 10th century. “That is really kinky. That is the author fantasizing too much.”

Ms. Bakhtiar, who is 68 and has a doctorate in educational psychology, set out to translate the Koran because she found the existing version inaccessible for Westerners. Many Jewish and Christian names, for example, have been Arabized, so Moses and Jesus appear in the English version of the Koran as Musa and Issa.

When she reached the problematic verse, Ms. Bakhtiar spent the next three months on “daraba.” She does not speak Arabic, but she learned to read the holy texts in Arabic while studying and working as a translator in Iran in the 1970s and ’80s.

Her eureka moment came on roughly her 10th reading of the Arabic-English Lexicon by Edward William Lane, a 3,064-page volume from the 19th century, she said. Among the six pages of definitions for “daraba” was “to go away.”

“I said to myself, ‘Oh, God, that is what the prophet meant,’ ” said Ms. Bakhtiar, speaking in the offices of Kazi Publications in Chicago, a mail-order house for Islamic books that is publishing her translation. “When the prophet had difficulty with his wives, what did he do? He didn’t beat anybody, so why would any Muslim do what the prophet did not?”

She thinks the “beat” translation contradicts another verse, which states that if a woman wants a divorce, she should not be mistreated. Given the option of staying in the marriage and being beaten, or divorcing, women would obviously leave, she said.

There have been similar interpretations, but none have been incorporated into a translation. Debates over translations of the Koran — considered God’s eternal words — revolve around religious tradition and Arabic grammar. Critics fault Ms. Bakhtiar on both scores.

Ms. Bakhtiar said she expected opposition, not least because she is not an Islamic scholar. Men in the Muslim world, she said, will also oppose the idea of an American, especially a woman, reinterpreting the prevailing translation.

“They feel the onslaught of the West against their religious values, and they fear losing their whole suit of armor,” she said. “But women need to know that there is an alternative.”

Religious scholars outline several main threads in the translation of “daraba.”

Conservative scholars suggest the verse has to be taken at face value, with important reservations. They consider that the Koran holds that force is an acceptable last resort to preserve important institutions, including marriages and nations. Some scholars have accused some Muslims of trying to make the verse palatable to the West.

“I am not apologetic about why the Koran says this,” said Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an Islamic scholar who teaches at George Washington University. The Bible, he noted, addresses stoning people to death.

Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian whose writings underpin the extremism of groups like Al Qaeda, published extensive commentaries about the Koran before he was hanged in 1966.

Islamic tradition states that Muhammad never hit his 11 wives, and Mr. Qutb considered a man striking his wife as the last measure to save a marriage. He cited the prophet’s horror at the practice by quoting one of his sayings: “Do not beat your wife like you beat your camel, for you will be flogging her early in the day and taking her to bed at night.”

The verse 4:34, with its three-step program, is often called a reform over the violent practices of seventh century Arabia, when the Koran was revealed. The verse was not a license for battery, scholars say, with other interpretations defining the heaviest instrument a man might employ as a twig commonly used as a toothbrush.

Sheik Ali Gomaa, the Islamic scholar who serves as Egypt’s grand mufti, said Koranic verses must be viewed through the prism of the era. The advice “is always broad in order to be relevant to different cultures and in different times,” he said through a spokesman in an e-mail message. “In our modern context, hitting one’s wife is totally inappropriate as society deems it hateful and it will only serve to sow more discord.” A caller on a television program in Egypt recently asked the mufti if he should stop sleeping with his wife if she was causing discord, the spokesman said. The mufti replied that the measures in the verse were meant to bring harmony, not to exact revenge.

More liberal commentators, particularly women, say the usual interpretation reflects the patriarchal practices of the Arabian peninsula.

This school holds that the sacred texts have become encrusted with medieval traditions that need to be scraped off like a layer of barnacles. Some Saudi women have been trying to do this by emphasizing the public role played by Aisha, one of the prophet’s wives, while the Asma Society gathered Muslim women from around the world in New York last fall to explore the establishment of a female council to interpret Islamic law.

Some analysts hold that the verse cannot be rendered meaningfully into English because it reflects social and legal practices of Muhammad’s time.

“The whole idea is not to punish her,” said Ingrid Mattson, an expert in early Islamic history at the Hartford Seminary and the first woman to be president of the Islamic Society of North America. “It is like a fear of sexual impropriety, that the husband takes these steps to try to bring their relationship to where it is supposed to be. I think it is a physical gesture of displeasure.”

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