The Saudi-based Arab News is always a font of useful information. Today we learn that wife-beating is “widespread” in the Kingdom, in part because men are under the mistaken belief that Islam permits it. Not so! says the Arab News, but only conditionally:

It is certainly against Islam to beat a good wife. An erring wife should be warned first and advised. If that does not work, then the husband could give her a light beating, the purpose of that being to embarrass rather than inflict pain.