Domestic violence is considered by many to be a problem in Muslim-majority cultures.
The incidence in many Muslim-majority countries (where women hide their bruises and little is ever reported to authorities) is uncertain, but believed to be great by Muslim feminists. In some Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia, reports indicate that domestic violence is quite widespread. One recent study, in Syria, found that 25% of the married women surveyed said that they had been beaten by their husbands.
One study found that half of Palestinian women have been the victims of domestic violence. A WHO study in Babol found that within the previous year 15.0% of wives had been physically abused, 42.4% had been sexually abused and 81.5% had been psychologically abused (to various degrees) by their husbands, blaming low income, young age, unemployment and low education.
A 1987 study conducted by the Women's Division and another study by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in 1996 suggested that domestic violence takes place in approximately 80 percent of the households in the country. In Pakistan, domestic violence occurs in forms of beatings, sexual violence or torture, mutilation, acid attacks and burning the victim alive (bride burning).
According to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in 2002, over 90% of married women surveyed in that country reported being kicked, slapped, beaten or sexually abused when husbands were dissatisfied by their cooking or cleaning, or when the women had ‘failed’ to bear a child or had given birth to a girl instead of a boy.
The prevalence of domestic violence has been cited as a cause of high rates of suicide, mostly through self-immolation, among Kurdish women in Iran.