AL ARABIYA 

A local bookstore in Canada has sold all its copies of “A Gift for Muslim Couple,” a Muslim marriage guide that advises men on how to beat and control their wives, a newspaper reported on Friday.

The 160-page book, published by Idara Impex in New Delhi, India, is written by Hazrat Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi, who is described in the book’s foreword as a “prolific writer on almost every topic of Islamic learning,” The Toronto Sun reported.

The book which is available at online Islamic bookstores and even through eBay, advises husbands that “it might be necessary to restrain her [wife] with strength or even threaten her.”

Thanvi writes in his book that a husband may scold his wife, “beat by hand or stick,” withhold money from her or “pull (her) by the ears,” but should “refrain from beating her excessively.”

The author goes on to say that “the husband should treat the wife with kindness and love, even if she tends to be stupid and slow sometimes.”

Page 45 contains the rights of the husband, which include his desires being fulfilled, his wife’s inability to leave “his house without his permission,” and that she should “not allow herself to be untidy … but should beautify herself for him …”

The store’s manager, who did not want to disclose his name, told the paper that the book had been sold out for some time, and the store’s owner, whom the manager identified as Shamim Ahmad, refused to comment.

It wasn’t clear whether the shop has ordered more copies of the book.

Thanvi is an Indian Sunni scholar (1863 – 1943) whose book has remained in circulation decades after he wrote it.

Some of us have not forgotten when liberal Wisconsin radio host John “Sly” Sylvester outrageously accused GOP Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch of performing “fellatio on all the talk-show hosts in Milwaukee” and sneered that she had “pulled a train” (a crude phrase for gang sex). (Earlier, he called former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a “black trophy” and “Aunt Jemima.”)

Or when MSNBC misogynist Ed Schultz called talk show host Laura Ingraham a “talk slut” for criticizing Obama’s petty beer summit. Or when Playboy published a list of the top 10 conservative women who deserved to be “hate-f**ked.” The article, which was promoted by Anne Schroeder Mullins at Politico.com, included Ingraham, “The View’s” Elisabeth Hasselbeck, former Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino, GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann and others. Yours truly topped the list with the following description: a “highly f**kable Filipina” and “a regular on Fox News, where her tight body and get-off-my-lawn stare just scream, ‘Do me!’”

And then there’s the left’s war on Sarah Palin, which would require an entire national forest of trees to publish.

A reporter asked Obama to comment on examples of liberal hate speech at Tuesday’s press conference. He whiffed, of course. This is, after all, the brave leader who sat on his hands while his street thugs attacked tea party mothers and grandmothers as “Koch whores” during the fight over union reform in Wisconsin. (As I reported last week, his re-election campaign is now targeting the Koch brothers’ private foundation donors in a parallel effort to chill conservative speech and activism.) He’s leading by example.

So no, we won’t get any phone calls from Mr. Civility. Acknowledging the war on conservative women would obliterate The Narrative. Enjoy the silence.

In Aceh, Enforced Sharia Law Has Outsized Impact

No one underestimates the challenges of helping women become equal participants in a civil society only recently concocted. But allowing progress to recede shouldn’t be an option. Recent negotiations between the Karzai government and the Taliban, in which women’s rights could be diluted, should have all of us worried.

It is too bad, meanwhile, that we are restricted in these discussions by terminology that rings of cliche. “Women’s rights” sounds too much like debates about abortion and subsidized day care. What we’re really talking about is basic human rights. The freedom to work, to make decisions about one’s own life, to seek an education and to be safe to walk on the streets without a male escort. To be fully human, in other words.

Anything less is terrorism by another name. The insanity that sends jihadists to rain hell on civilized nations is the same that stones women to death for failing to comply with primitive norms of behavior.

According to a June, 2010 Pew opinion survey of Egyptians:

Fifty nine percent said they back Islamists. Only 27% said they back modernizers. Half of Egyptians support Hamas. Thirty percent support Hizbullah and 20% support al Qaida. Moreover, 95% of them would welcome Islamic influence over their politics….Eighty two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves. 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion…When this preference is translated into actual government policy, it is clear that the Islam they support is the al Qaida Salafist version.

When given the opportunity, the crowds on the street are not shy about showing what motivates them. They attack Mubarak and his new Vice President Omar Suleiman as American puppets and Zionist agents. The US, protesters told CNN’s Nick Robertson, is controlled by Israel. They hate and want to destroy Israel. That is why they hate Mubarak and Suleiman.