Members of a Calgary Muslim association appear to have removed marital advice from a website that suggested “lightly hitting” one’s wife in “extreme cases of disobedience” after a query about the content was made by Metro.

The posting dated Sept. 29 on muslimsofcalgary.ca appears to be an English-translated summary of two books written in Arabic by Sheikh Mohammed Abdelhaleem Hamed, titled “How to Make Your Husband Happy” and “How to Make Your Wife Happy.”

Other websites that have published the translation suggested a University of Alberta students’ association created it in the late 1990s; however, members of that group had not been reached at press time.

Metro inquired about the posting on the local website, which is registered to the Muslim Association of Calgary, via an email address over the weekend. By Monday, the content had been pared back and a section titled “Correcting her Mistakes” had been removed entirely.

A person did respond to requests for comment Monday but declined to give his name or offer a rationale for posting the material.

“I don’t know, it’s volunteers who do this work . . . maybe you need to go re-read the article. If it’s 99 per cent positive, why don’t you just focus on the positive and just leave that one per cent?” the man said.

But Brian Seaman, a research associate with the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre, found the now-removed content troubling, specifically sections concerning examples of a wife’s disobedient actions, including the frequent refusal of sexual intercourse without cause and constantly not praying on time.

“To advocate hitting somebody for disciplinary purposes — there’s a lot wrong with that,” Seaman said, before commending the site administrators for removing the post.

Metro was also asked to submit questions via email about the article posted to muslimsofcalgary.ca and did so Monday afternoon. Requests made via email and by telephone inquiring when a response would be received were not returned Tuesday.