Aside from Religion, few things have spilt more blood and ink than the battle of the sexes. Even those beholden to the most strict and twisted notions of piety recognize the one domain where the rules sometimes just don’t apply -

Mr. Moussaoui said there were times when a Muslim can lie without being immoral: to reconcile Muslims, to answer “yes” when a wife asks, “Am I beautiful?” and to carry out jihad.

Because any man knows that answering that question honestly is tantamount to jihad unto itself. Best to save that energy for a battle you might actually win.

Now while mere questions of spousal beauty allow for wiggle room, in a different corner of the world, we learn that divorce is rather literal -

A Muslim couple in India has been told by local Islamic leaders to separate after the husband “divorced” his wife in his sleep, the Press Trust of India reported.

Sohela Ansari told friends that her husband, Aftab, had uttered the word “talaq,” or divorce, three times in his sleep, according to the report published in newspapers on Monday.

When local Islamic leaders heard of the sleep talking, they said Aftab’s words constituted a divorce under an Islamic procedure known as “triple talaq.” The couple, married for 11 years with three children, were told they had to split.

Husbands and wives are known to lash out at small annoyances as a way of signalling something deeper; in this case, maybe it really was just the small annoyances -

A jobless man burned himself to death after his wife refused to serve him meat for dinner, Indian police said Sunday.

The wife, who works as a domestic, refused to cook meat, saying they could not afford it.

Irritated by this, Sanjivan locked her in the house before setting himself on fire outside.

Poor Sanjivan, if he only knew about the Triple Talaq.