Wa `alaykum as-salamu wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.

 

There are two views on that:

 

One, after a proven case of misconduct by the wife, the husband should talk and advise his wife to stop. If she insists, the husband moves to a different way by showing no interest in intimacy with her and in case the wife still insisted; the husband uses a symbolic form of beating with a tooth brush as Ibn Abbas explained.

 

In any court or police report, if the wife claimed physical abuse from the husband, they look for proof which is mainly proven by marks. A tooth brush by no means will cause marks to the best of my knowledge. So it is a symbolic not physical.

 

Two, beating here in Arabic does not mean like hitting at all. It means to keep a distance between you and the other person. The term (Da Ra ba) means also linguistically to put distance.

 

I personally lean to the second interpretation and against any form of beating another person, wife, child, elderly etc. If you have issues with one, stay away and keep your distance.

 

Almighty Allah knows best.