Juliane Hammer’s Peaceful Families weaves ethnographic research on incidences of and responses to domestic violence (DV) in the American Muslim community within a set of interlocking theoretical questions concerning the relationship between Qurʾanic exegesis and action, the efficacy of anti-DV initiatives in Islamic spaces and among Muslims in non-Islamic spaces, and the status of Muslim bodies—both female and male—as “others” in mainstream American society. As such, this clearly argued and valuable study makes important interventions into the fields of women and gender studies, Islamic studies, American religion, and the multidisciplinary work on DV.
A more focused intra–Islamic studies intervention of the study lies in Hammer’s treatment of verse 4:34 of the Qurʾan, in which the last of the options laid down to address nushuz (wifely disobedience) includes the verbal root d-r-b, which means to hit, to strike, and/or to take leave of, among other meanings in Arabic. Here Hammer’s...
