Russian cleric sparks outrage with guidance on hitting disloyal wives

Russia has strict and conservative laws, and controversies are not uncommon. A particular cleric contributed to another uproar in the country.

Timur Kamayev is an imam from the Russian Republic of Tatarstan. He faced a lot of backlash after publishing a controversial guide on YouTube. The video presented his views on marriage relationships and methods for "properly beating a wife." Although the recording disappeared from the internet, it didn’t calm the critical opinions and heated discussions among netizens.

Timur Kamayev is one of the most famous Muslim clerics in Russia. The 30-year-old heads a mosque in Tatarstan, built in memory of Irek Minnikhanov (the son of Tatarstan leader Rustam Minnikhanov) and opened in 2018. The well-known journal Tatarstan Business Online describes the mosque as "frequently visited by Tatarstan VIPs."

In addition to his clerical duties, Timur Kamayev runs a podcast called Tea With Hazrat, produced by the central state-run Tatar news agency Tatar-Inform. In each episode, he answers questions supposedly asked by the Muslim community while sipping tea from a cup.

As part of the series, he decided to weigh in on the discussion about how a husband should treat a disloyal wife. In the episode, he said: "You should always start with a reprimand, that is, try to explain to your wife why she is wrong. You should always speak to her beautifully and wisely". After a moment, he added that a man could punish a woman by sleeping in separate beds. The biggest confusion, however, was caused by his final method of dealing with the situation: "In exceptional cases, the āyah verse suggests beating. Beating allows a woman to understand that she is doing something wrong and can be done using a miswak, a twig for cleaning teeth made of Salvadora persica wood."

"Hit your wife gently with the miswak a few times, but hit lightly, only in the arm from the elbow down, not the whole shoulder joint. The essence of [beating - ed. note] is not to injure the person, not to leave bruises, but to gently say: 'stop, you are doing something wrong, your husband is already unhappy, he has already reached a point where he raises his hand.' But we must understand here that the terms 'beating' and 'assaulting' mean different things," he said to his audience.

The cleric faced a massive wave of criticism. Netizens condemned the suggestion of beating women. Specialists also commented on his "teachings," including Alyona Popova, a Russian women’s rights activist. On her Telegram channel, she stated that Kamayev is lobbying for "a propaganda of violence," which cannot be justified.