In the Babylonian Talmud which is the oldest codex of Torah law, women are protected from men. The Talmud states that men must treat their women with respect in and outside of the home. Not to do so is to sin and disrupt the divine covenantal order between individual humans and the divine presence. A man in other words is not a paterfamilias tyrant raging unchecked in his own home. The covenant between the individual and the divine constrains the male. In Christian theology the female is likewise elevated by attaching natural law rights to her person, which shields the female from male abuse, domination and desecration. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men [and women] are created equal. Christianity was in large measure spread in the urban areas of the eastern Mediterranean by women who viewed it as a humanizing and equalizing influence. Christianity's cultural and social appeal was clear to women, the poor, the dispossessed and those under tyrannical rule – the good works of this world, clear faith, and the defence of natural law rights would bring benefits to the soul in the next. If you abused your women you would be damned.
The paganism of Islam is entirely different. Paganisms are attached to the soil, the cult, the communal, the tribe, the family and of course the male. In Islam the male is the paterfamilias ruler of his own 'state'. The tribe is likewise run by a male tyrant along with the state at large. The male is the dominant force. He can enact the pagan laws of the greater tribe and cult through his unbridled authoritarianism at home. In other words, the home is the state in miniature. This simply reflects the pagan world of the tribe and culture. Without authoritarian diktats both at home and within the broader tribal culture, society would collapse – this at least is what pagans believe. To enact social peace means that men must dominate.
Thomas Noble an entertaining and able historian at Notre Dame once stated that if you wanted to understand a society, you needed to look at the most complex form of societal organization, namely the military. This is true. If you want to understand a society at the cultural and human level Noble's rule can be rephrased to state that you must look at how women are treated and what role they play in society. In the case of Islam it reveals a dark ugliness that Moslems and the politically correct want to hide.
If we view the Moslem world and the female's role in it we see a vast sickness both psychologically and socially. The employment rate of women is 25 % across most Moslem countries meaning that most women in the urban centers which constitute half of the Moslem population, sit at home. This lack of productivity of half the population constrains economic and political development. Women in many Moslem countries are constrained by regulations around work, mobility, having bank accounts, social contacts and cultural mores about 'female work'. General illiteracy amongst Moslem females is over 50 % across the Moslem world with of course variations by region. This means that in many Moslem locales we have unemployed illiterate females, or unemployed literate females with nothing to do but support their men, their families and breed babies – or at least that is the expectation even though Moslem fertility rates are plunging in most Islamic countries. 20.000 young girls are murdered each year in dishonor killings, which are a part of both Koranic culture and Sharia law. In most Moslem states the rate of wife-abuse is over 50 %. Polygamy in many areas is still common. Consanguineous marriages between cousins constitute from 30% to 70% of all Moslem marriages depending on the locale. In places like Tehran there are over 300.000 mostly educated Iranian prostitutes in a city of 5 million – a shockingly high figure. Slave trading of females for sex is an on going feature of Arab and Moslem life – even in Western centers – with young girls sold off to men for money for 'marriages' which are in fact sex sorties. The woman is usually sold to more than one man. In short we have a social implosion and a deep sickness in Moslem culture reflected by its treatment of women. Women are not the equal of men, but more the equal of animals.
The Koran and Muhammad were and are both very unkind to women. Muhammad commented that women are stupid, akin to asses or donkeys, and evil. In fact according to Muhammad, 99% of hell's inhabitants are female, which is disturbing especially when you consider that the Koran details the destruction of non-Moslems in Hell in over 500 verses or about 10% of the book. If women comprise 99% of hell's citizens, where do the non-Moslems go? In any event the male dominated culture of Islam mandates the control of the female by 'the right hand', which in Koranic law denotes a 'rightful' display of power. No other verse is more poignant than Sura 4:34 which mandates the beating of women by the man.
4:34 Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because God has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband's) absence what God would have them guard. As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (Next), refuse to share their beds, (And last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them Means (of annoyance): For God is Most High, great (above you all). [Yusuf Ali]
If they return to obedience.......in other words the woman has little else to do but to please her master. This enslavement of the female is encapsulated by the ridiculous niqab, and hijab. Moslem female dress has little to do with piety and only to do with the identification of chattel, taken property and submission to the patriarchal order. One has to wonder what the Moslem female gets in benefit from the Moslem cult and why she in some cases is so ardent in its defence. The same question surely applies even more to Western Marxists and Feminists who apparently are completely blind to the destruction of the woman in the Moslem cult.