You need to use your original insight about the social context within which any religion develops, both shaping and being shaped by it. In the process, prejudices and horrors can go both ways, but over time becoming entwined such that what is religious and what, cultural, become indistinguishable, even to their practitioners -- except in comparison with other places. Middle Eastern culture, or for that matter, 19th century European culture, is patriarchal to a degree not known in historical Southeast Asia, and that has left its imprint on Southeast Asian Muslim practices.
For instance, in a place like Malaysia, under some jurisdictions -- Muslim religion is the prerogative of the individual states of the federation -- there is a system of joint property, i.e. anything acquired within a marriage is subject to equal division between the man and the woman on divorce. The archives indicate that even a century ago, women were well aware of these rights in those jurisdictions, and happily went to court over it -- the archives have these wonderful documents where women bringing cases against their sons or ex-husbands would detail every buffalo, every piece of land (but omitting jewelry ;)) acquired in the course of the marriage. Indeed, some two centuries ago, in at least one of those jurisdictions, the senior Muslim religious official made a ruling on inheritance, that in his view, work was mainly the work of women, and that therefore, one-third of the property of the deceased husband should go to his wife prior to any subdivision by Muslim law, which would end up giving her an independence of her sons.
In the one state in Malaysia which has had extensive periods of government by the Islamic party -- the state you often read about in the media, usually glossed as fundamentalist in comparison with the supposedly liberal federal government -- women continue to be major traders in the market; in the past, with their colourful head-dress, now usually with the 'Muslim' head cover, but they can be as raunchy as ever.
In both Indonesia and Malaysia, there's one well-known Muslim community that remains matrilineal, while historically descent in other communities was reckoned ambilaterally, but first under colonial rule and then with the independent state, increasingly patrilineally. Which is not to say that everything was hunky-dory in pre-colonial days, and that there have been no gains from 'modernity'.
In Malaysia, to the credit of the women's movement, the campaign against domestic violence has been such that even the avowedly Islamic party has had to pay at least lip service to it, although there were quarters who had earlier suggested that a law against domestic violence would contradict Muslim law.
There's much to fight about in contemporary Muslim ideology and practices, not least of which are those pertaining to women and women's rights. But it's to give way to what seems to be now respectable Muslim-bashing to characterise each and every practice of Muslims as religiously derived.
kj