Recently, Marvin Levant (Dec. 28), Steve Harris (Dec. 30), Syed Soharwardy (Jan. 2), and Riazuddin Ahmed (Jan. 5) debated Islam through the forum of the Herald's letters to the editor.

The issue of wife beating and gender inequality in Islam has become convoluted and highly controversial as many Muslims try to sugar-coat the ugly truths and others try to shed some light on the issue.

Soharwardy's statement that "Beating one's wife is not only wrong, it is criminal and completely un-Islamic" is incorrect. The Qur'an says that "men are in charge of women because Allah has made one of them (men) to excel the other (women), thus man's superiority over women . . . good women are the obedient ones . . . admonish the rebellious women and banish them, and scourge them (whip them severely to inflict pain) (4:34) . . . smote them (hit or strike with the hand or with a weapon causing pain, beat them . . . (4:62)".

Islam does not recognize gender equality. For example, polygamy is accepted in Islam, but polyandry is not. A woman's testimony is considered half as worthy as a man's in court; a son inherits twice as much as a daughter does. Muslim men may marry Muslim, Jewish or Christian women, but Muslim women can marry only Muslim men. In short, sharia law leads to the inhuman treatment of Muslim women by their husbands and others, especially in South Asia and the Middle East.

Higher education is emphasized more for sons than for daughters; in cultural honour killings, almost always women are the target for murder. Under sharia, divorced Muslim women get custody of their sons under eight years of age and daughters until puberty, and then the fathers take the children away. Sharia enabled one of the worst fundamentalists, the vile and ruthless military dictator, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, to put more than 15,000 rape victims in jail because they could not comply with the absurd Islamic condition requiring them to have numerous male witnesses of their victimization. They were charged with fornication and their rapists were let go free.

At birth, all infants are equal, but Islam makes then unequal; sharia is incompatible with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Soharwardy knows all of this to be true. It is in his Qur'an and other Islamic texts. I have no desire to hear useless excuses from mullahs for all these gender inequalities in Islam.

Soharwardy and I were on CHQR Radio in Calgary to discuss the issue of a 17-year-old Muslim boy who beat his 16-year-old sister. That boy was incited by an illiterate mullah to discipline his sister because she was suspected of flirting with a white boy in northeast Calgary. Soharwardy and I agreed it was not an Islamic requirement for the boy to do what he did. I mentioned that Muslim husbands do have sharia-sanctioned power to discipline their wives.

Soharwardy personifies an addiction to religion. I watched him on his own community TV channel shouting his head off just before the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Dec. 9, 2004, in favour of same-sex marriage, and Parliament passed the civil marriage legislation, C-38, recognizing same-sex marriage on June 28, 2005. He literally shouted that "Canada will be wiped off the face of the Earth by a tsunami if it accepts same-sex marriage. . . . Who the (heck) does the Parliament of Canada think it is to make laws? The laws are made by God."

That is clearly an addiction to religion. God may be sovereign in the constitutions of countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, but in secular democracies such as Canada, the people have the sovereign power to make laws.

In its infancy, Islam was known to be the religion of the sword. The Taliban and al-Qaeda have made it the religion of international terrorism and suicide bombers. They are violating the Islamic tenet that "Muslims who murder and commit suicide will be condemned to hell." Yet, suicide bombers commit both of these sins and claim to end up in paradise. Not only have Islamists committed atrocities against non-Muslims, but they have done worse to their fellow Muslims. I have a video that shows fundamentalists who slaughtered 33 Muslims and taped their criminal acts in northern Pakistan in 2010.

One of the cruellest Islamic dicta is the law of blasphemy, which carries the death penalty against those who insult the Qur'an or the Prophet Muhammad. Zia-ul-haq imposed it in Pakistan. Not only has that law mostly targeted moderate and secular Muslims, it has also been used against minorities, especially the Christian population of Pakistan. One of its victims is Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who was accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Over the years, I have learned of hundreds of blasphemy cases against Christians in Pakistan. The law is often used by Muslims to take revenge on a neighbour. These blasphemy laws must be removed from the books.

On Jan. 3, Salman Taseer, governor of Punjab, was murdered by his own bodyguard because Taseer spoke against the blasphemy law. It is shameful that more than 500 mullahs honoured the killer and celebrated Taseer's murder on the streets of Islamabad and Karachi. I have not heard any Islamic group condemning it except for the one I belong to, the Muslim Canadian Congress.

The Muslim world is ruled by a corrupt elite, including the monarchs, oligarchs, military dictators, corrupt politicians, depraved bureaucrats, and the murderous fundamentalist Muslim clerics. On the whole, Muslims seem to be frustrated, less recognized except in international terrorism, less secularly educated than the West and less developed. Without a democratic system of government, they are hopeless, hapless, desperate, and mad at Jews and Christians. That is really sad.

Mahfooz Kanwar, PhD, is a professor emeritus at Mount Royal University.