As Islam spread, it adopted the cultural practices of various empires, including those of the neighboring Persian and Byzantine empires. The Christians who populated the Middle East and the Mediterranean had more rigid customs associated with women. In the Christian Byzantine Empire, the sexes were segregated. Women were not to be seen in public, were veiled, and were given only rudimentary education. As the expanding Islamic empire incorporated these regions, it also assimilated these cultural and social practices. In other words, the particular misogynistic practices that Islam came to adopt were largely inherited from the Christian and Jewish religious customs of the neighboring societies Muslims conquered. The significant point here is that sexist attitudes toward women, far from being unique to Islam, were prevalent among Christians and Jews as well.

XREF: The idea that conquering societies adopt the cultural practices of conquered regions echoes broader theories of cultural assimilation and religious syncretism beyond this Islamic context. QUESTION: Worth probing the historical strength of this inheritance claim — how did Byzantine practices compare to pre-Islamic Arabian customs around women?

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 172