In January 2007, the Frankfurt-based judge Christa Datz-Winter ruled against the petition of a woman who asked for accelerated divorce proceedings because her husband harassed her and threatened her life. 1 The twenty-six-year-old woman had left her husband of five years because of the severe violence she was subjected to during the marriage. The judge, however, found that the violence the woman experienced did not constitute a special hardship, because, as she explained, the husband belonged to the “Moroccan cultural sphere” and as such could be reasonably expected to make use of his religiously sanctioned “right to physically discipline” his wife. Judge Datz-Winter underscored this argument by referring to a passage from the Koran. She asserted that this passage—Sura 4, verse 34—established male superiority over women and gave the man the right to punish a disobedient wife. 2

The reasoning in the case was entirely the judge’s own and not based on any arguments put forth by the abusive husband or any external expert witness. 3 It was the judge who decided that “culture” and “religion” should be the proper framework for evaluating this case of domestic violence, and it was she who decided which culture and which religion that meant. In this framing,“Moroccan culture” and “Islam” as religion were ascribed to the couple and particularly to the husband, as primary and determinate categories. As this line of argumentation indicates, these categories were presented as interchangeable and seamlessly continuous with each other—he belongs to the “Moroccan cultural sphere” and therefore the Koran is the proper reference point. 4 The judge, however, did not merely designate these as the main categories, she also presented her own understanding