Juridical Study of Wife's Obedience to Husband

This article juridically studies the wife's obedience to husband according to the Holy Quran and hadiths; and it is aimed to specify the scope within which the wife is religiously obliged to obey her husband. The most important verse in this concern which may be referred to is the verse 34 of the Chapter Nisa which in the first phrase, suggests that men are in charge of life and which rationally implies that wife's obedience to her husband is obligatory. In other words, the necessity of obedience which may be understood from the verse is a guiding one; but, because of the rule of "intellectual inference", its leading necessity may be understood as well. Here to be guiding is not inconsistence with being of leading necessity. In the end, the leading necessity of the wife's obedience to her husband has been taken as being undisputable and because of opposition (obedience as compared to disobedience) it is understood that the scope of obedience concerns obedience in sexual affairs. In hadiths, women are called to obey their husbands in general or seeking for their husband's permission to perform some devotional ceremonies such as fasting, hajj, or non- devotional ones such as going out of the house or making a vow. Some of these hadiths suggest the rational and guiding necessity of obedience and from some other hadiths in which the scope of husband's permission is specified, it is understood that in enjoyment, husband dominates his wife and in this assumption, obedience to husband is of a leading one.