The 16th Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II, has called for a strong stand against domestic violence, emphasizing that his daughters are instructed to resist any form of abuse and to defend themselves if physically attacked by their husbands.
Speaking at the National Dialogue Conference on Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Prevention from an Islamic Perspective, Sanusi revealed concerning statistics about domestic violence, highlighting that 45% of cases in the past five years in nine Shari’a courts in Kano were related to domestic abuse.
The conference, which focused on “Islamic Teachings and Community Collaboration for Ending Gender-Based Violence,” was organized by the Centre for Islamic Civilisation and Interfaith Dialogue (CICID) at Bayero University Kano (BUK), in partnership with the Development Research and Projects Centre (DRPC) and supported by the Ford Foundation.
In his speech, Sanusi acknowledged the teachings of Islam, which, when interpreted in the correct context, permit a husband to lightly discipline his wife under very specific conditions.
However, he condemned the misuse of this allowance, citing cases where domestic violence was rampant, far exceeding the bounds of light discipline.
He said, “You can take that verse and say that as a husband, I’ve been given this permission to beat my wife lightly. But when those rules are not followed, when anger overrides reason, women are slapped, punched, kicked, and beaten without any regard for the Islamic guidelines.”
Sanusi’s research, conducted for his doctoral thesis on family law, revealed troubling patterns in the judicial system, particularly in Kano’s Shari’a courts.
Over a five-year period, 41% of cases dealt with maintenance issues, 26% involved harm, and 45% of those cases were related to domestic violence, including wife-beating.
Sanusi went on to detail the severity of these cases, describing injuries such as broken limbs, knocked-out teeth, and women suffering continuous beatings with sticks.
He also mentioned incidents where husbands, together with other wives, would collectively assault one wife. In some extreme cases, even children were compelled to bring their fathers to trial for assaulting their mothers.
“Not one case of wife-beating was light,” he remarked.
Sanusi firmly stated that wife-beating, or any form of violence against women, is unequivocally forbidden in Islam, stressing that it constitutes harm, and harm, in all forms, must be eradicated.
“Beating your wife, your daughter, or any woman is haram; it is prohibited. Allah commands that all harm must be removed. Beating, gender-based violence—this is harm—and it must be removed,” he declared.
Sanusi’s views on this matter have drawn criticism in some quarters, but he stood by his convictions, particularly when it comes to the treatment of his own daughters.
He explained that when his daughters marry, he makes it clear to them that no abuse will be tolerated.
“If your husband slaps you and you come home to me and you haven’t slapped him back, I will slap you myself. I did not send my daughter to marry someone who will slap her. If he doesn’t like her, let him send her back to me. But don’t beat her,” Sanusi stated.
He emphasized that the message must be twofold: women should not tolerate abuse, and men must be taught that violence is never acceptable. “We must teach our daughters not to accept it, and we must teach our sons that it is not allowed.
We have to raise our children to understand that violence against another human being, whether it is your brother, your sister, your son, your daughter, or your wife, violates the basic dignity of a human being,” he added.
Sanusi’s bold stance has sparked a wider conversation about domestic violence and its acceptance in certain societal and religious contexts.
His call for a reformation in how men and women understand gender-based violence aims to foster a more compassionate and just society, grounded in both Islamic principles and universal human rights.
