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Answering Christianity writes:

1- Wife beating is not allowed in Islam!

Wife beating anytime and for any reason is never allowed in Islam. There is however a questionable condition where Allah Almighty seems to allow the husband to beat his wife, and that is after he gives her two warnings to stop showing ill-conduct and disloyalty.

2- Noble Verses and Sayings that support the prohibition of any type of wife beating:

3- The Prophet forbade striking on the face:

4- What about the saying about striking the wife lightly on her hand with a siwak?

There is not a single Saying or Noble Verse from Prophet Muhammad or the Noble Quran respectively that mentions any such beating.

5- More proofs about the translation of Noble Verse 4:34:

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6- Conclusion:

According to the Noble Quran and the Sayings of Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him above, wife beating in Islam is definetly prohibited, possibly even in the case where the wife fails after she was warned twice for her ill-conduct and disloyalty.

I have always heard that disciplinary beating is allowed in Islam. But it says the contrary. Is it valid?

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    This is one of the websites that cares little for traditional scholarship and prefers to read modern ethics into islam on many occasions. Classical scholars allowed punishing the wife, they only put restrictions on the conditions and the extent of what kind of beating is allowed. See here.
    – G. Bach
    Dec 3, 2016 at 14:36
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    @G.Bach What I am asking is that whether this interpretation is valid or not. I am aware the clssic view
    – money-printer
    Dec 3, 2016 at 14:57
  • What if the classical scholars aren’t exactly correct? As time progresses we can have a deeper understanding of the language and meaning behind the words and can therefore interpret things differently.
    – user32715
    Nov 27, 2019 at 0:07

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My impression is that Answering Christianity is exploiting ambiguity:

Wife beating any time and for any reason is never allowed in Islam.

By writing "any time" and "any reason", it's natural to read the sentence as if it's universally forbidden, which is an unorthodox stance. It goes against these example fatawa: IslamWeb, Islam Q&A, Zam Zam Academy, Ask Imam.

However, this is not what they're actually claiming; they mean wife beating is forbidden in the sense of causing injury, etc., which agrees with consensus and is not controversial.

It feels deliberately misleading.

As for the "questionable condition" remark...

Does the Quran allow husbands punish their wives? gives a decent overview of the topic. Qur'an 4:34 is fairly unambiguous, under the stipulated conditions hitting one's wife is permissible. I'm not too sure what "questionable condition" means, but many tafsir interpret it exactly as it says in the Qur'an:

... And those you fear may be rebellious disobedient to you when such signs appear admonish them make them fear God and share not beds with them retire to other beds if they manifest such disobedience and strike them but not violently if they refuse to desist from their rebellion after leaving them in separate beds. ... -- Tafsir al-Jalalayn

See also Tanwîr al-Miqbâs min Tafsîr Ibn ‘Abbâs and Al Qushairi Tafsir.

Nevertheless, wife beating was not perceived well by the Prophet; his initial reaction was one towards retaliation:

He said to him: "I gave him my daughter in marriage and he slapped her". The Prophet, Allah bless him and give him peace, said: "Let her have retaliation against her husband". -- Asbab Al-Nuzul by Al-Wahidi, TafsirX

So it might be a questionable action if there's some alternative.

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