Recent­ly, we hear Chris­tians mak­ing strange claims about Sura’ An-Nis­sa’ (4):89, by say­ing that it is a verse meant to be applied as a pun­ish­ment for apos­tates. The said verse…

It is claimed that : Surah 4:34 is the noto­ri­ous verse which advices Mus­lim hus­bands with regard to wives from whom they fear ​“rebel­lion” (“wa-llātī takhāfū­na nushūza­hun­na”) even­tu­al­ly to beat them…

Is it wis­dom or fol­ly ? Has the Qur’an com­mit­ted an anachro­nism or does it reflect com­pre­hen­sive understanding ?

In one of his recent arti­cles, Sam Shamoun con­tends that because the Qur’an cites the response of the Israelites to Yah­we­h’s covenant as ​“We hear and we dis­obey” (2:93 ; 4:46) where­as the Bible quotes the same as ​“We will do every­thing the LORD has said ; we will obey” (Exo­dus 24:7) and ​“We will serve the LORD our God and obey him.” (Joshua 24:24), there­fore, the Qur’an, and I quote Shamoun, ​“is in error, a point which can­not be debat­ed on his­tor­i­cal or log­i­cal grounds.” This hubris­tic remark results from shut­ting one’s eyes from the con­text of the cit­ed Qur’an­ic remark in verse 2:93, as well as the com­ple­men­tary nature of 4:46 in its elab­o­ra­tion. The issue dis­cussed in the con­text of 2:93 was the mali­cious tongue-twist­ing of the Israelites, which, in prac­tice, was reflec­tive of their dis­re­spect­ful and defi­ant atti­tude vis-a-vis the impli­ca­tions of Yah­we­h’s covenant.