and I can guarantee, none of the seventh century Arabs who assembled the Q'uran were thinking of that either. They were down to earth warriors, not mystics.

You are trying to sugar coat the pill. It is what it is. In the Muslim countries I've been to, the majority of the people are illiterate or marginally literate. These convoluted readings don't cut any ice with them. If the Q'uran says you can smack down your wife, it means you can smack her down. That's it. That's why Sufi and Alevi interpretations of Islam, which are mystical, have never gotten much traction. The Q'uran is, as it boasts, a practical book for a practical world, and is meant to be taken literally. It makes no pretense of not being exactly what it appears, although over the centuries intelligent people have fought that conclusion.

chai sometime. Its creation is an art form and since I am not at all proficient at it, it is something I do miss.

Now I am glad you brought up all these different groups because...um...are they all not killing each other presently? Have not Ahmedis been declared non-Muslims in Pakistan and have they not faced a lot of discrimination there for believing differently? There are different groups to be sure but they haven't exactly all agreed to go their separate ways in peace by any means.

As for the Q'uran, it is like the Bible, for every negative verse a countering one can be quoted. The Bible advocates the rape of beautiful virgin war prisoners (Deut. 22)among many other atrocious things but Biblical absolutists don't like to hear about that.

One can argue that the Bible is an important historical/cultural document, a beautiful allegorical work of literature, heck, you can even argue that it has some good instructions about how to live BUT if you try to assert that it is the divinely inspired word of God, that it is all literally true and must be obeyed to the letter, you are going to have to explain Deut. 22. How do you do that? You ignore it, as much as possible, and if somebody rubs your face in it, you prevaricate. Some of the contortions Biblical literalists achieve are frankly incredible.

Modern Christians cherry pick, or have abandoned the notion of a divine Bible. The true literalists are a minority in the present time. If Muslims felt the same, there would not be any discussion. But Q'uranic immutability isn't a fringe movement--it's mainstream, to the point where virtually no Muslim disputes the divine origin of the Q'uran or its ascendency over every sphere of life. To be a Muslim you have to accept this.

Since this is the case, we have a perfect book handed down by Allah which appears to be, especially in this century, much short of perfect. Since I don't speak Arabic, I can't debate the worth of the different translations. I would find it curious that a couple of centuries and many English translations later this one person has suddenly come up with a new meaning for this specific verse that conveniently removes this famous thorn in the side of Muslims trying to do D'ua to Westerners (growing up fundie Christian, as I did, I was an early acolyte of Ahmed Deedat. Very interesting trend he set in motion, which continues to this day although he is gone. There's now fundie Muslim/Christian cross-pollination to the extent that I have heard that there are now Muslim geocentrists and flat earthers--alas for the days when Islamic countries were understood to respect science--even some Egyptian millenials, which is REALLY odd...but I digress).

Surah Nisah is very nice and there are these good verses, but do they get negate the rest? This is the question every woman must ask herself.

Off topic from Islam: No, Durrani did not suffer the worst abuses, but her stepson's wife did have acid thrown on her face and she took her in and treated her, and she did not stick with the habit of hushing everything up and putting up with it without complaint.

I have a shred of sympathy for the people who feel that these crimes should be hushed up because they make Pakistan look bad and so on...but only a shred. I have found that if a room is full of cockroaches the first step in getting rid of them is to turn on the light.

This needn't be confused with religion, however, as I feel it frequently is, even in the case of Durrani's book which was subtitled "the truth about a woman living in the Muslim world" or something like that.

I guess it comes down to the extent to which one wishes to follow the mainstream doctrine of Q'uranic divinity. Not to mention one has the Sunnah and Hadith tossed at one day in and day out, although at least to a limited extent these are debated. The holy writ as it stands however appears to support the side of the fundamentalists. I don't think any movement has made any substantial impact on this up till now.

it's long and sad enough all right. But I think we can get enough evidence just from the texts in this case.