“I learned that women cannot be witnesses in the Syariah courts, or that a woman's word counts for half of a man's.”

The claim that women cannot testify is not a strong version of the argument. It is simply untrue, and the verse usually cited to support it says the opposite.

Qur'an 2:282 concerns the recording of debt. It instructs the parties to call in two male witnesses, and if two men cannot be found, then one man and two women whom you judge fit to act as witnesses, so that if one errs the other can remind her. The verse names women as witnesses. It is difficult to build a prohibition out of a text that explicitly appoints them.

What the verse does establish is a specific arrangement for one specific transaction in one specific historical setting, a commercial debt contract in a society where women were, as a rule, kept out of commerce. The stated reason is reminding, not deficiency.

Scholars have noted that the verse's clear text applies to economic affairs and to criminal cases where hudud (fixed prescribed penalties) are involved. In matters concerning women exclusively, such as pregnancy, birth, and puberty, the evidence of a single woman is sufficient. That is the exact reverse of a rule that discounts her by half.

There is a real conversation to be had about how contemporary courts apply all of this, and about the gap between a legal principle and its handling by a particular judge in a particular building. That conversation deserves specifics.

What it does not deserve is a summary that misstates the verse it rests on.