Hello, Master. There’s been a lot of discussion in the group about the post below. Could you please share your thoughts on it?
Be sure to read this and send it to your spouse, too.
The late Shaykh Jaʿfar Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ was one of the greatest jurists in the Shia world. His standing was such that leading Shia scholars relate that he once said: “If all the Shia books of jurisprudence were thrown into a river and carried off to the sea, leaving the Shia without a single page of fiqh, I have the whole of Shia jurisprudence in my heart, from beginning to end. I could recite it all so that it could be written down again.” He had also become a marjaʿ.
Scholars and those close to him learned that his wife behaved harshly at home, though they did not know the full story. They made inquiries until they discovered that this great man of God, this eminent jurist, would sometimes go home and get a thorough beating from his wife.
One day, four or five of them gathered and came to see him. “Master,” they said, “we’ve heard something and need to ask you about it. Does your wife sometimes hit you?”
“Yes,” he replied. “She’s Arab, and a powerful, sturdy woman. When she gets angry, she gives me a real beating. I can’t overpower her.”
“Then divorce her,” they said.
“I won’t,” he replied.
“Let us send our wives over to teach her a lesson.”
“I won’t allow that either.”
“Why not?”
“This woman is one of God’s greatest blessings to me in this house. When I go out and stand in the courtyard of the Commander of the Faithful, the whole courtyard prays behind me, and people show me reverence. Sometimes, because of the rank God has granted me, I grow a little conceited. Then I come home and get beaten, and my pride is knocked out of me! It is God’s rod of correction. It has to be this way.”
Shaykh Hossein Ansarian, *The Self*.