There is a way of arguing that leaves everything repairable, and another that cuts something. Sheikh Muhammad Said Raslan describes the difference precisely.
Two ways of arguing
He first observes that some husbands argue with their wife without hardening the quarrel: even in the middle of a dispute, they preserve the cords of affection and never sever them.
Then he describes the other: the man who, in the dispute, becomes unjust and oversteps. At the slightest error, the slightest disagreement, he shuns her, and he cuts the cords of affection and mercy.
The image of the cords is useful. A dispute can pull on them without breaking them. Shunning severs them.
The verdict
The sheikh leaves no room for interpretation. This is not how it is done, he says, this is not good conduct between spouses. And he adds: there is neither religion nor nobility, after a dispute, in shunning one's wife.
The word nobility matters as much as the word religion. Prolonged silence often presents itself as a position of dignity. The sheikh classes it as exactly the opposite.
Why it works, and why it is serious
Shunning works, in the short term. It puts the other in a position of asking, it reverses the balance, it often obtains apologies. That is precisely why it is used.
But what it obtains, it obtains by withdrawing affection, that is to say precisely what marriage is supposed to produce. We cover that purpose in the purposes of marriage in Islam: tranquillity, affection and mercy are not bonuses, they are named aims.
What to do instead
Sheikh Raslan gives the way out elsewhere: leave the discussion when it catches fire and turn your attention elsewhere. That is something other than shunning. Leaving a discussion suspends a subject; shunning punishes a person.
We develop this point in disputes in the Muslim couple.
A useful reservation
There exists in the Legislation a regulated, limited and purposeful form of withdrawal, which has nothing to do with the shunning described here. Sheikh Abd ar-Razzaq al-Badr indeed recalls, commenting on shunning her only at home, that even within that framework the matter must not leave the household.
The subject of this article is something else: repeated silence, without term and without object, used as a means of pressure. For anything touching the application of the rules, the question goes to a person of knowledge, not to an article.