I do think it's fair though to say that some cultures are more deeply misogynistic than others. I understand why native Brits feel shy about saying that (not talking about you specifically lovely Hotes, just thinking about media discourse in general) and maybe I have more air cover as being visibly not ethnically British but yeah, places like Pakistan, loads of the Middle East, rural India and the Indian subcontinent, parts of Central Asia - women are just NOT valued the same, sometimes not even in law, definitely not in culture.
On Islam specifically, I fully understand why people want to tread carefully but a few years ago I read an essay by a theologian (can't recall who, Theo Hobson possibly, or possibly it was actually Dawkins) who made the brilliant point that Islam, unlike Christianity, has never been through a Reformation. The Christian Reformation had all sorts of long term beneficial consequences that echoed down the centuries, the most important one being the separation of church and state which meant that laws could be made from a humanist perspective and no longer with reference to what the Bible and the Pope said. This directly allowed western societies to make equality laws for women, gay people, abortion access etc.
Islam on the other hand has never (yet!) been through a Reformation and so, at its most conservative, culture (and in Islamic theocracies like Afghanistan, the actual law of the land) is made directly with reference to the Koran, just like the West used to do in the Middle Ages. This means that the cultural frameworks provide attitudes to women which were relevant for a very aggressive nomadic conquering tribal society, which is the societies where Islam started. So this is where you end up with laws like men can have multiple wives, cos that makes sense in the context of a tribal society (more women than men due to the early Islamic societies constantly invading, fighting and dying) and women being worth half of men in law.
I don't think we should be ashamed of examining this stuff and there are brilliant Muslims and former Muslims like the magnificent Ayaan Hirsi Ali who expound on this in great deal. I understand what people are doing when they pretend that all misogyny is the same and western democratic misogynists are just as misogynistic as the Taliban leaders, but it's just not true, I think everyone knows it's not true, and ultimately it stops us having the frank conversations that might save the next Sara Sharif.
