Issues related to gender equality and justice remain one of the most contested areas of debate both in praxis and in the Islamic intellectual tradition. The primary focus of this book is on one particular verse in the Qur’an, 4:34, and its interpretations in traditional as well as contemporary Islamic sources. The verse gives husbands a unilateral and unique right allowing them to physically discipline their recalcitrant or disobedient wives. This is against the various prophetic traditions which reveal discomfort at the permissibility of wife-beating. The issues at hand are what constitutes recalcitrant (nushuz) and what is meant by wa-dribuhunna, most commonly translated as ‘and beat them’. In her introduction, Chaudhry expresses her own discomfort at how gender egalitarianism was viewed amongst the religious leaders she encountered, most of whom took their authority from the ‘Islamic tradition’, i.e. the long historical chain of authoritative scholars. The leaders were people who wished to retain legitimacy within Muslim communities and not depart from a particular patriarchal and more literalist understanding of the verse. Thus, the tradition assumed an almost legendary status and Muslims continue to invoke it even if it stifles new creativity in Islamic thinking. This is especially true in the ‘egalitarian–authoritative’ dilemma posed in contemporary readings of Islamic texts. Chaudhry adds that this historical framework is really a pre-colonial framework which became a mythic golden age for Muslims who felt humiliated by the colonialist experience. While the author admits that the concept of ‘Islamic tradition’ remains more an abstract than a historical reality, the book is divided into pre-colonial and post-colonial texts alongside the author's own position that the book is a ‘study of text, not an anthropological or sociological study’. Chaudhry does not examine what actually happens in Muslim marriages.

Against her personal interest in this topic, the author sets out on an in-depth legal and exegetical exploration of the multiple readings and voices surrounding this verse. The question she poses at the beginning of the book is a legitimate one, namely, how were some Qur’anic verses understood to be moral exhortations while others assumed to be legal rulings? The particular cosmology of pre-colonial writers permitted interpreting this verse to mean a literal beating of one's wife but even in this reading ethical questions were raised over procedure, severity and the disciplinary steps of abandonment, admonishment. Chaudhry quotes from a wide range of sources and her writing is very accessible. However, as a point of style, I would have preferred the quotes from the sources to have been placed directly in the main body of the text rather than as footnotes. This would allow the reader to associate the arguments with specific names rather than the consistent but more vague tributes such as ‘pre-colonial’ or ‘Hanafi scholars’ or even ‘pre-colonial exegetes’.

The post-colonial period has changed the discourse on this Qur’anic verse with more diverse voices and, according to Chaudhry, a greater preoccupation with gender egalitarianism. However, for some even in the modern period, the right of the husband to discipline his wife remains. Chaudhry's central concern is that the living community of believers wants a more just interpretation of such verses and this can only be done if the past is demythologised. While the sentiment is to be applauded, the book only deals with the intellectual interpretation and not the lived practice of married couples. The verse remains contentious but I would argue that even demythologising the past does not guarantee more just interpretations of this and other difficult verses in the Qur’an.