What is the relevance to this discussion of laws that were changed over a hundred years ago? And if it is still occurring with various Christian sects in the USA, then that is a separate issue to be dealt with separately.

What you are doing is attempting to make Islam and Christianity morally equivalent. This is based on a simple atheist algorithm, namely 0=0. According to atheism, all religions are worth the same amount, because they are all fiction. However the different religions are demonstrably not the same. Christianity is better than Islam. Buddhism is better than it, too. Therefore the moral equivalence and 0=0 equation are not appropriate here.

However the moral equivalence argument tends to seem wise and is accepted on, say, a simple, shallow show like Q&A. That is why people keep using it.

The point is not what some Christian sects are doing or what was on the books century ago. The point is that the Koran, which is supposedly the last word of the Creator of the Universe until doomsday, says a husband may beat his wife. This is not up for debate and it is pretty easy to understand.

The best that can be done, as the interviewee on ABC apparently did, is say that we kuffars don’t understand the ‘context’ and we should not think about it anymore. But, say you are a Muslim man and you want to do the ‘right thing’. Who has moral authority in your life? The laws and mores of Australia, which seem to change a lot nowadays, and that are based on what you consider to be a kuffar religion (Christianity) anyway? Or the last and definitive word of one whom you consider to be the Creator of the Universe, and shariah law? What does the wealth, abundance and safety of Australian life mean to such a man? It’s just impermanent material effects which will all vanish in the end anyway.

If Islam were superior to other religions, it would have shown that by now. We would be looking to places like Iran and Pakistan as the best places to live. But we don’t.

Islam works best when its adherents ignore the teachings of the Koran. That’s because Islam is wrong and it’s best to avoid things that are wrong. That is also why Turkey was so successful as a secular republic, at least when compared to other Muslim-majority countries. But now they are slipping back. I think many atheists hope that Muslims will eventually ignore the Koran, as you suggested. Better that they are liberated from their wrong cult and Islam ceases to exist, I’d say.

There are still Christian sects in the US that endorse the “chastisement” of wives. They seem to think it is based on scripture.

The legal right to “chastise” your wife was only removed relatively recently in the west.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chastisement

“In the UK the traditional right of a husband to inflict moderate corporal punishment on his wife in order to keep her “within the bounds of duty” was similarly removed in 1891.[5][6]

“In the 1870s, courts in the United States overruled the common-law principle that a husband had the right to “physically chastise an errant wife”.[7][page needed]”