Reaction to the decision has been almost as sulfurous as it was to the cancellation of the opera.

“When the Koran is put above the German constitution, I can only say, ‘Good night, Germany,’ ” Ronald Pofalla, general secretary of the main conservative party in the country, the Christian Democratic Union, said to the mass-market paper Bild.

Dieter Wiefelspütz, a member of Parliament from the more liberal Social Democratic Party, said in an interview that he could not recall any court ruling in years that had aroused so much indignation.

Muslim leaders agreed that Muslims living here must be judged by the German legal code. But they were just as offended by what they characterized as the judge’s misinterpretation of a much-debated passage in the Koran governing relations between husbands and wives.

While the verse cited by Judge Datz-Winter does say husbands may beat their wives for disobedience — an interpretation embraced by Wahhabi and other fundamentalist Islamic groups — most mainstream Muslims have long rejected wife-beating as a relic of the medieval age.

“Our prophet never struck a woman, and he is our example,” Ayyub Axel Köhler, the head of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, said in an interview.

The 26-year-old woman in this case, whose name has not been disclosed, was not so fortunate. Born in Germany to a Moroccan family, the woman was married in Morocco in 2001, according to her lawyer, Ms. Becker-Rojczyk. The couple settled in Germany and had two children.

In May 2006, the police were summoned to the couple’s home after a particularly violent incident. At that time, Judge Datz-Winter ordered the husband to move out and stay at least 50 meters (164 feet) away from the home. In the months that followed, her lawyer said, the man threatened to kill his wife.