Domestic violence often results from intertwined social factors, most notably family breakdown, economic pressures, and weak communication among family members. Cultural legacies that justify violence and gender discrimination also contribute to entrenching this behavior. The absence of community support and awareness exacerbates the problem, necessitating comprehensive legal and educational interventions to mitigate its effects.

Domestic violence has been defined in various ways, including any act or speech characterized by severity and cruelty against a family member, causing material, moral, or physical harm. It is religiously forbidden as it contradicts the objectives of divine laws in preserving life and mind.

The World Health Organization defined domestic violence in its 2002 report on family violence and health as any behavior within intimate relationships causing physical, psychological, or sexual harm to those involved. This includes physical assault such as hitting with hands or feet, psychological violence like insults, and abusive behaviors such as isolating the victim from family and friends, monitoring movements, and restricting access to external help or information.

According to these definitions, this type of violence occurs within the family circle between spouses, parents and children—especially during divorce—and among siblings, as well as from children to elderly parents.

It is an aggressive behavior aimed at instilling fear, causing harm, humiliating and threatening the victim, exposing them to emotional problems or sexual coercion, and imposing control through illegitimate means. This negatively affects victims, who lose self-confidence and become incapacitated in their ability to act or react, sometimes leading to depression, requiring urgent psychological and neurological medical intervention.

Motivations for Domestic Violence

Domestic violence is often linked to inherited customs and traditions, such as the husband’s perceived right to control his wife’s life, and societal privileges granted to men, along with mistaken beliefs associating masculinity with control and violence within the family.

The deteriorating economic situation contributes to domestic violence, especially when the husband loses his job, suffers financial losses, or faces harsh work challenges. His feelings of failure in managing financial crises cause stress, anxiety, and inability to provide for his family, leading to verbal or physical violence that is more an expression of anger than intentional harm.

Substance abuse, including drugs and alcohol, also turns family life into a nightmare, especially when addiction occurs, disrupting psychological, emotional, and material stability.

Individuals exposed to violence, neglect, or abuse in childhood may later abuse their own families, mistakenly believing it controls family matters.

Hard-heartedness, lack of empathy, selfishness, and self-love make a person harsh toward those they support, showing no mercy or compassion.

Anger and quick temper cause loss of balance during conflicts, leading to uncontrolled words and actions such as hitting, cursing, and shouting without considering consequences.

Some psychiatric patients and narcissists practice psychological and physical abuse towards partners or children without others noticing or believing the victim, due to the abuser’s ability to hide their crime and present a positive image to society or the victim’s family.

Psychological violence includes insulting and humiliating the person privately or publicly, deliberately degrading them so they hear only curses, insults, and hurtful words, deprived of kind words and pleasant phrases, and forbidden from anything they love, including seeing relatives, friends, or social contact. This controls their will, destroys social relationships, and makes the victim feel powerless, as if another personality controls their emotions.

Examples include constant threats of divorce, threats to marry another without consent, neglect, and lack of appreciation for family members.

Psychological violence also involves harmful words that diminish the victim’s worth, such as cursing, insulting, slandering, or calling them stupid, which the victim internalizes, making stupidity part of their self-image.

Financial violence uses money as a means of pressure and harm. For example, a husband may control his wife’s salary or deprive family members of their rights to treatment, food, education, and a decent life despite having the means.

This may lead the victim to waste money irresponsibly if it falls into their hands, to satisfy desires they were deprived of.

Effects of Domestic Violence

Domestic violence results in social and family disasters, notably family breakdown caused by harshness and violence used by parents in dealing with spouses and children.

Mutual violence between spouses and eventual divorce separates family members and increases the likelihood of children becoming homeless or delinquent. Children living in broken families are more prone to aggressive behavior, defending themselves against siblings and schoolmates, and damaging public property during difficult situations.