[realnilkless]

Well, the fatwa relating to putting up with domestic violance was obviously wrong, and this has not been supported by the fuqaha' as far as I'm aware. You're free to bring in a few references to prove your point.

That aside, your generalizations regarding the "authoritarian streak in Islam" were frankly ridiculous; yet more ridiculous was your relating of this notion to as-Sudays (may Allah preserve him), a shaykh on the payroll of the Saudi government comdemning protests; what else do you expect? If you had been studying the positions of the scholars concerning the protests carefully, you'd have realised that [1] the saudis and their allies have been condemning the bahraini protests and supporting the aal khalifah (since the protestors are shi'ah) whereas they have been supporting the syrian revolution (e.g. Sh. 'Adnan al-'Ar'ur) (since the protestors are sunni, rebelling against shi'ah alevi kuffar); [2] on the other hand, Iran and its allies (like 'Sayyid' Hasan NasruLlah) have been condemning the syrian protests, and supporting the bahraini protests for the opposite reasons.

And no, the 'mainstream interpretations of the Qur'an and Sunnah' would not necessitate condemnation of the protests, given their peaceful nature (hence their shouts, "silmiyyan, silmiyyan"), and the massacres brought about by the reigimes coupled with their religious justification of such actions. In Yemen, both salafi scholars like az-zindani and zaydi shi'i scholars in addition to the Islah etc have come out in support of the protests. There have been religious precedents too - take the uprising of Imam Zayd b. 'Ali and Imam Nafs az-Zakiyyah, both of whom were armed, and supported by the likes of Imam Abu Hanifah.

was-salam