Besides the quality of the articles, I was impressed by the presentation of it on Asiaweek Online. I wonder if they are reading the same Koran I am. The answer, of course, is that they are not. They are reading it in the original Arabic, and it is standard doctrine among Muslims that the Koran cannot be translated adequately into any other language. This has not stopped scholars from having a go at it - some of them pretty good Muslims.
Good women are obedient.
They guard their unseen parts because Allah has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them. Then, if they obey you, take no further action against them. No doubt the treatment of women advocated in the Koran was, in terms of mercy and magnanimity, a vast improvement over the brutal norm in 7th-century Arabia. But it hardly amounts to equality.