I. In the first place, the Koran does not teach that women have no souls.  Not only was Mohammed too deeply indebted to his rich wife Khadijah, to venture such an assertion, but he actually teaches in the Koran the immortality and moral responsibility of women.  One of his wives having complained to him that God often praised the men, but not the women who had fled the country for the faith, he immediately produced the following revelation: 

     “I will not suffer the work of him among you who worketh to be
     lost, whether he be male or female.” (Sura iii.)

In Sura iv. it is said: 

     “Whoso doeth good works, and is a true believer, whether male or
     female, shall be admitted into Paradise.”

In Sura xxxiii: 

    “Truly, the Muslemen and the Muslimate, (fem.)
    The believing men and the believing women,
    The devout men and the devout women,
    The men of truth and the women of truth,
    The patient men and the patient women,
    The humble men and the humble women,
    The charitable men and the charitable women,
    The fasting men and the fasting women,
    The chaste men and the chaste women,
    And the men and women who oft remember God;
    For them hath God prepared
    Forgiveness and a rich recompense.”

II.  Thus Mohammedans cannot and do not deny that women have souls, but their brutal treatment of women has naturally led to this view.  The Caliph Omar said that “women are worthless creatures and soil men’s reputations.”  In Sura iv. it is written: 

    “Men are superior to women, on account of the qualities
    With which God has gifted the one above the other,
    And on account of the outlay they make, from their substance for them. 
    Virtuous women are obedient.... 
    But chide those for whose refractoriness
    Ye have cause to fear ... and scourge them.”

The interpretation of this last injunction being left to the individual believer, it is carried out with terrible severity.  The scourging and beating of wives is one of the worst features of Moslem domestic life.  It is a degraded and degrading practice, and having the sanction of the Koran, will be indulged in without rebuke as long as Islamism as a system and a faith prevails in the world.  Happily for the poor women, the husbands do not generally beat them so as to imperil their lives, in case their own relatives reside in the vicinity, lest the excruciating screams of the suffering should reach the ears of her parents and bring the husband into disgrace.  But where there is no fear of interference or of discovery, the blows and kicks are applied in the most merciless and barbarous manner.  Women are killed in this way, and no outsider knows the cause.  One of my Moslem neighbors once beat one of his wives to death.  I heard her screams day after day, and finally, one night, when all was still, I heard a