Chapter 4, verse 34 of the Koran reveals that Mohammed believed that husbands should be in charge of women, and should hit them if they refuse to do as told by their husbands.
Muslim men, who are used to reading the Koran regularly, can hardly escape the command of this verse to beat their wives?
The1999 US State Department report on human rights in Jordan said in section 5:
"Wife beating is technically grounds for divorce, but the husband may seek to demonstrate that he has authority from the Koran to correct an irreligious or disobedient wife by striking her", so clearly 4:34, which, because it is in "The Koran", has to be part of Sharia law, does influence some modern Muslim men to hit their wives, which explains why the Islamic Fiqh Academy, a group of Islamic scholars that was created by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (the alliance of 57 mostly, and partly Muslim states) refused to criticise wife beating in its of course Sharia compliant fatwa on domestic violence:
"The Fatwa establishes a definition of "Domestic Violence", which provides that violence by one family member against another contravenes the objectives of Sharia law. Some critics have noted that the definition does not prohibit a man from raping his wife and upholds the right of a husband to beat his wife, so long as the beating conforms with Sharia law.
"...The provisions of the Fatwa also implicitly uphold other aspects of Sharia law that are contrary to women's rights, such as requiring a woman to repay her bride-price if she divorces her husband for excessive beatings."
Note that the fatwa says that women, who divorce their husbands because of "excessive beatings", are required to repay the dowry price at which they were sold to their husbands.
You can read that fatwa at the bottom of this OIC webpage.
Mohamed Kamal Mustafa, the Muslim cleric, who was given a 15 month suspended jail sentence and a fine by a Spanish court for writing a book, which advocated wife beating, was also clearly inspired by 4:34, as he said in his defence that his book had interpreted passages from the Koran.
Falah al-Hujeri, a United Arab Emirates Islamic court judge, and Dr. Ahmed al-Kubaisi, the head of Sharia studies at Baghdad University, were also no doubt inspired by that verse, as they have both said that Sharia law allows husbands to hit their wives.
A Muslim religious foundation, run by the Turkish Government, issued a book in 2000, which also said that husbands could beat their wives, and as such institutions do not say things like that because they were inspired by a non-Muslim source, it should be fairly obvious by now what inspired them to make that statement.
It should also be fairly obvious by now why the chairman of a Canadian Muslim group said this year that husbands could use force upon their wives.
There is nothing new about Muhammad's pro-wife beating views influencing husbands to beat their wives either. Muhammad's child wife 'Aisha said in a "Sahih al-Bukhari" hadith (7:72:715) that in the 7th century, Muslim wives were beaten more often than non-Muslim wives:
"Narrated 'Ikrima: Rifa'a divorced his wife whereupon 'Abdur Rahman bin Az-Zubair Al-Qurazi married her. 'Aisha said that the lady (came), wearing a green veil (and complained to her (Aisha) of her husband and showed her a green spot on her skin caused by beating). It was the habit of ladies to support each other, so when Allah's Apostle came, 'Aisha said, "I have not seen any woman suffering as much as the believing women [the Muslim women]. Look! Her skin is greener than her clothes!"
So, it would appear that for the last 14 centuries, Muhammad's views have inspired Muslim men to hit their wives and exactly for that reason the scale of wife-beating by Muslim men in some countries is so horrifying.
For example, as this CNN article points out, the UN Development Fund for Women says that nearly 90% of Afghan wives are beaten by their husbands.
An Egyptian news website cites a study, which showed that 80.4% of Egyptian men, and 66% of Egyptian women think it is acceptable for a husband to beat his wife if she speaks to another man, which proves how much Egyptian women have been subjugated over the centuries – thanks to the "Koran" and Sharia law inspired violence. Therefore, it should not surprise anybody that Egyptians voted overwhelmingly for Islamist parties in the recent election.
This MSNBC article cites a Saudi university study, which found that 3 out of 4 Saudi wives had been beaten by their husbands in the previous 3 years.
This Amnesty International article cites a Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences study, which found that over 90% of Pakistani wives had been kicked, slapped, beaten, or sexually abused by their husbands.
So, the claim that Islam was first to give women their rights and dignity is false.
It is quite possible that the presence of large and growing numbers of Muslims in the West will influence some non-Muslim husbands to beat their wives, as violent Islamic practices have clearly spread to non-Muslim cultures, which were under Muslim rules in the past.
For example, most people think that honour violence upon women is a specifically Muslim problem, which also occur in Hindu and Sikh cultures, who were ruled in the Indian Subcontinent by Muslims for about a millennium until the British Raj deposed them. The practice also occurs among Greeks, who were ruled by the Muslim Turks from 15th to the 19th centuries, and among the Spaniards and Portuguese among Latin Americans, whose parent cultures, Spain and Portugal, were ruled by Muslim Arabs from 8th to the 15th centuries, as well as among Italians, some of whom were ruled by Muslim Arabs for a shorter period.
The Pakistani-Peruvian axis theory, coined by late American historian Professor Carroll Quigley, argues that many peoples outside the Muslim Arab world have been influenced by its culture. The fact that “honour crime” exists only in those non-Muslim cultures that were once under the Muslim rule for a substantial period gives evidence to support Prof. Quigley’s theory of Islamic cultural influence on non-Muslim cultures.