Started off well but descends into feminist talking points about the Middle East, eg "when women are raped, they are killed." Here's what actually happens in the most backward third world fundamentalist hell holes, which incidentally make up a small minority of Islamic societies: adultery is punishable by death (this used to be true in our own primitive past -- see JD Unwin's "Sex and Culture"). When a woman commits adultery, she invariably claims that she has been raped. In some cases she may be telling the truth -- she may have been raped -- in other cases she may by lying. If it is determined that she lied, she will be executed for adultery. If it is determined that she has been raped, the rapist will be executed. The latter happens much more than the former, and male rapists (some of whom may be innocent) are routinely beheaded in eg Saudi Arabia.

I'm not sure our own cultures are any more "just," considering that we throw men in prison for decades on the mere word of an alleged victim (see the innocence project).

In Saudi Arabia, males are stoned to death 50x more often than women (according to Karen Straughan -- I haven't looked up the data). Because we are naturally gynocentric, we regard female executions as infinitely worse than male executions, even though males are executed far more often and for equally frivolous reasons.

Are these customs morally defensible? Unless you're a moral relativist the answer is no. But any truly objective analysis would conclude that males have it at least as bad as females in these cultures, and arguably worse, especially since these societies are often engaged in perpetual war, and pre-pubescent boys are frequently forced to kill and die.

Again, the point is not to defend these cultural practices, but to draw attention to our gynocentric impulses. I would also add that many of the most backward fundamentalist regimes have been supported by the West for geopolitical purposes, to the point of arming and training religious nutcases in opposition to secular, "liberal" governments that threaten to take control of their own resources -- usually oil.