This is the main thing I have against Islam: It has gone way beyond its core principle. Any entry-level course in Islam will teach that it centers around doing good works in the name of Allah. Itself it isn't really that bad, as religions go. However, once women are treated like second class citizens (and Christians and Jews are guilty of that rubbish, too), it really ruins what could be a halfway decent religion. The last I knew, beating a wife is not doing a good work--in Allah's name or not.
Fact is, using this kind of force to dominate your wife (or children, for that matter) should be an ENORMOUS sin in any decent Muslim denomination. Abusing spouse, particularly to the extent of causing physical and/or emotional harm, stunts spiritual growth in that party. Which defeats the whole purpose of any religion--hence, this kind of abuse is an enormous sin. Even atheists and Satanists have a hard time coming to grips with this kind of abuse--aside those few that claim to worship the Devil but actually only worship evil. Most people realize that beating a wife is wrong.
And so is keeping them inside, treating them as property (that can be had for 2 1/2 tubs of silver, at that), making them wear a face veil, or insisting that they be submissive in the first place. Women, as with children, are to be treated as individual humans (with the exception of those scumbags that insist on perpetrating this kind of abuse in the name of God--those pigs are the ones that really need to be stoned to death or burned at the stake, and then condemned to damnation). All three major monotheistic religious platforms are guilty of this rubbish, and the leaders of all (particularly the small group of Jews at the top that control these religions from behind the scenes) should rightfully all be damned for it.
