True to Islam, the Sultan of Selangor's brazen honesty on the gross mistreatment of Muslim women from a gender-biased Syariah court must be highly applauded for several important reasons.

The Sultan is giving hope to the thousands of Muslim women left in a limbo year after year given the steely determination of the Syariah court to deny them divorce from husbands who have either abandoned them or are currently mentally or physically abusing them.

Syariah court injustices have created a class of "domestic refugees" made up of Muslim women feisty enough to live life on the run from philandering husbands who freely associate with women of ill-repute for fear of HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Even drug-addict husbands are empowered by the courts to hold on to women like bonded slaves and thus endangering their children. On refusing a Muslim cleric's advice to have intercourse with her philandering husband for fear of Aids, a Johorean was actually advised that Aids could be cured with hospitalisation!

These high-risk women need a divorce fast and now. Anything beyond that will be too late. There also are Muslim women so battered by the Syariah court and religious departments that they are resigned to live in sin given divorce is still denied after two decades of trying.

The Syariah court also is guilty of tempting Muslim women to declare themselves apostates since divorce would be automatic then. One would think that the Syariah court is adopting a "till death do you part" attitude until some women swear that their emancipation can be bought for a price dictated by their husbands.

The strong and definitive call to end injustices meted out to Muslim women, particularly in divorces and inheritance cases, demonstrates to both Muslims and non-Muslims, males and females alike, that true Islam is not a religion of misogynists as portrayed by the Western media and reinforced by the strange practices of many Muslim countries and institutions deemed to be Islamic (though nomadic in origin).

Gross unjust practices places the Syariah court in the same league with so-called Islamic parties such the Taliban and the Malay Taliban — PAS — famed for their cruel and highly unusual interpretation of the religion which only serves to further tar the religion's image.

The Sultan's underlying conviction — a Syariah court run on unthinking patriarchal values weakens the very core of Muslim society and seriously diminishes the image of Islam — is testimony to Malaysia's mettle in the Muslim world in upholding what is central to Islam: Justice.

May Allah bless the Sultan who is a cut above the rest.