It is often said that under Islamic (Shariah) law women are second class citizens. That is untrue.

Under Islamic (Shariah) law women are treated as sub-human.

If that seems a hyperbole, let me set out the shariah law principles governing sexual relations: Rape, whether anal, oral or vaginal is the husband’s right and the wife’s duty is to comply. A wife who resists – or who disagrees with the husband on anything – is to be subdued by beating her with a stick. The husband is entitled to four wives and as many concubines as he wants. For the wife who commits adultery the penalty is death – a penalty that is often enforced, especially in Islamic states like Iran.     

In theory, men might also be punished for sex outside of marriage but they never are – not for adultery and not for rape.

In theory, rape is a crime for Muslim men. But shariah law makes punishment impossible by requiring the testimony of four witnesses to convict. Moreover a rape victim is doubly deterred from complaining: First, if she does not have four witnesses shariah law treats her complaint as a confession to adultery for which, to reiterate, the penalty is death. Second, if the rape has occurred within the family, e.g. a girl raped by her uncle, Arab practice is that the girl is murdered by her family for having besmirched their honor. This is called an "honor killing" something which happens not only in the Middle East but within the Muslim enclaves in the U.S. and Europe.     

Let me be clear: "honor killing" is not something sanctioned by Islam. It is an informal sanction of Muslim societies. Islamic law deems it sufficient to protect rapists that four witnesses are required to convict.     

I have concentrated on Islamic law about rape because it is the most horrific exemplar of shariah law treating women as subhuman. But the examples of this are not limited to rape. In marriage women are virtually without rights. If beating a wife does not sufficiently correct her, under shariah law the husband may divorce her for any reason or none by repeating three times "I divorce thee" in her presence. The wife may only divorce the man if he is provably impotent. An Islamic wife has no rights over her children whose discipline and upbringing are entirely in the hands of the husband.     

It may be commented that some of these examples of Islamic sexual barbarism have analogs in primitive Christian practice. But the analogies do not go very far. Where modern Islamic law seems designed to protect rapists from punishment, even 13th Century English law protected women and harshly punished rapists: A victim had a choice. If impregnated, she could require the rapist to marry her. Or she could choose to have him castrated.