Firstly - I think everyone finds the idea of a man being entitled to beat his wife cruel and wrong - me included. Unfortunately there are people who practice and advocate domestic violence and abuse in all societies and they are all scum.

Secondly - I object to the title of this video. This video has nothing to do with Allah or his message. The detestable views of the imam in question are a product of classical Islamic manuals of fiqh (Islamic law) which owe as much to general status of women in medieval societies dominated by men as they do to the Qur'an and Sunnah. Such objectionable views on the treatment of women are rejected by most modern Islamic scholars. Typically the scholars who advocate such views are literalists who are obsessed with the external observance of faith and enforcing a system of Islamic law which reflects the misogynist nature of their states. They ignore the higher goals of Islamic law (maqasid al-Shari'ah) in their desire to force people to submit to an inflexible and homogenous interpretation of the Qur'an and the Sunnah which has much more to do with preserving the status quo and the traditional paternalistic power hierarchy than trying to live according to the teachings of Allah.

Thirdly - In my daily trawl through YouTube I have encountered many videos from Memri TV. This website only shows the very worst of the Islamic world - radical fringe preachers with little or no public support, unobjective critics of America and Israel, anti-semites, holocaust deniers, misogynists, etc. However, it presents these opinions as if they are widely held, rarely questioned, and representative of the Islamic world. Further more - and this is particularly worrying - the site often mistranslates, or takes out of context, what major Islamic leaders are saying in order to make them seem more extreme and bigotted. The site uses an Arabic title and icon in order to try and disguise its real agenda.

Who are Memri? They send out their videos to all senators and congressmen, and all mainstream media, so we should really know something about them!

MEMRI was founded in 1998 by its president Yigal Carmon, a retired colonel from Israeli military intelligence, and the academic Dr. Meyrav Wurmser. Meyrav Wurmser and her husband David Wurmser were both co authors of A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (Israel) which was the precursor for the Wolfowitz doctrine- which led to PNAC - Project for the New American Century. Dr. Meyrav Wurmser received her doctorate at George Washington University, by researching the life and works of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism. Her husband David Wurmser works directly under Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby. It was David Wurmser that told Dick Cheney that Wilson's wife Plame was the one that sent Wilson to Niger.

MEMRI's headquarters are in Washington DC. It is a non-profit organization, exempt from taxation, that has private donors. MEMRI's largest donor is The Bradley Foundation. The Bradley Foundation has also provided funding for the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). PNAC brought together prominent members of the (George W) Bush Administration (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz) in the late 1990s to articulate their neoconservative foreign policy.

* Rush Limbaugh -- sought deferment (because of a cyst on his tail end).
* George Will -- sought graduate school deferment, (too smart to die).
* Pat Buchanan -- sought deferment (for bad knee).
* Pat Robertson -- his US Senator father got him out of Korea as soon as the shooting began.

* Sean Hannity: did not serve.
* Bill O'Reilly: did not serve.
* Chris Matthews: did not serve.
* Matt Drudge: did not serve.
* Steve Forbes: did not serve.
* Tony Snow: did not serve.
* Michael "Savage" Weiner: did not serve.
* Brit Hume: did not serve.
* Roger Ailes: did not serve.

# Paul Gigot: did not serve.
# Bill Kristol: did not serve.
# Ralph Reed: did not serve.
# Michael Medved: did not serve.
# Charlie Daniels: did not serve.
# Anne Coulter: did not serve.
# Jerry Falwell: did not serve.
# Alan Keyes : did not serve.
# Ted Nugent: did not serve.

* Karl Rove: did not serve.
* Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve.
* Richard Perle: did not serve.
* Douglas Feith: did not serve.
* Eliot Abrams: did not serve.
* Ari Fleischer: did not serve.
* Andrew Card: did not serve.
* Ken Adelman: did not serve.
# Mitt Romney - did not serve in the military but did serve the Mormon Church on a 30-month mission to France.
# John Bolton: did not serve.
# Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.
# Bill Frist: did not serve.
# John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments, to teach business.
# Trent Lott : avoided the draft, did not serve.
* Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee" He defeated tripelegic Max Cleland by questioning his patriotism!
* Don Nickles: did not serve.
* Mitch McConnell: did not serve.
* Rick Santorum: did not serve.

The destruction of the fourth estate and push for militaristic American policy, we should have listened to warnings given by Eisenhower in his farewell address...

Neo-cons are currently fractured but at still omnipresent at hill, Elliot Abrams #2 at NSA still promotes the idea of democracy in the Middle East (linchpin of neo con agenda) however others have split over Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz has been keeping quiet since joining the World Bank, Douglas Feith helped plan US strategy for Iraq but now admits mistakes, Richard Perle has hit the Bush team for occupying Iraq and William Kristol faults Rumsfeld for putting too few boots on the ground. Looks like rats abandoning a sinking ship.

Wolfowitz's response to questions about this incident:

"We are looking into it. And mistakes, pretty ugly mistakes can get made in wartime. And that is again one of the reasons why if you can find a peaceful way to resolve things it is so much better. I would remind everybody here...it wasn't so long before that incident when people were saying 'Why don't you shoot a few looters in Baghdad because looting is causing terrible disruption...'

Frontline arrived late and saw this aggressive demonstration. They closed the scene by quoting the car's owner. What if they had been able to use a quote similar to Wolfowitz's above? Or what if Frontline investigated the situation even more and found out the wood was looted from another family and that they were furious? It's all in the framing and everybody has an agenda and biases.