Is Islam sexist?

[opebo]

Yes, as are all the major religions.

[opebo]

Yes of course it is. The Koran tells men to beat disrespectful wives, disgusting.

Do you feel the same way about the Southern Baptist Convention telling wives to "gracefully submit to their husbands"? The Koran and the Bible aren't as different as many would think. I agree with you that Islam is more sexist.

"Submitting" to your husband in a peaceful and understanding way is a LOT different then being authorized to beat the hell out of your wife if she speaks out of turn. The whole point of the "submitting" thing anyway is explaining that the husband is the head of the household and a wife should support the decisions of the breadwinner. Kind of dated, sure, but not horrible like being encouraged to beat a disobedient wife.

There's a difference between the two, though both are quite sexist. It's not much of a leap from one to the other.

Not much of a leap between allowing the husband to be the head of the household and using physical violence on someone? What?

Obviously not, States, and you well know that most of those traditional christian husbands beat their wives, or at least benefited from the fact that they could do so with impugnity.  In a society where wife-beating goes unpunished, all husbands gain power by it, even if they don't actually strike.

[opebo]

There also seems to be some confusion about what constitutes sexism.  opebo eloquently but misguidedly points out that many christians engage in Wife Beating.  This is a fact.  But the identifying feature of the act is not so much sexist as violence.  And, even that's not the most relevant point of the act.  Nor is sexism probably the underlying motivation here.  A man who regularly beats his wife is probably equally capable emotionally of regularly beating his brother.  But I'm no psychologist and neither is he, so we both probably speak guesses at this point.

But the point is that society tolerates, or tolerated, the wife-beating, while to varying degrees discouraging the beating of one's fellow man (assuming he was a white of the same class of course, one could beat a black or poor).  The sexism was not the beating of the wife, but the toleration of same by the society.