I'm at a wedding and my heart sinks. The imam is smiling as he addresses a large South Asian banquet hall fragrant with biryani waiting to be devoured.

The imam proclaims how it is the duty of the groom to love and be kind to his wife, as if she were a dog or a child.

He then reminds the bride to respect and obey the authority of her husband.

This seems at best benign and paternalistic. But it is just one example of how male guardianship and authority proliferates in Muslim faith communities.

It is a form of control that has a profound impact on women seeking divorce and religious mediation in marital disputes, and normalises the social policing of a woman's movements, behaviour and even dress, the kind of control that defines domestic violence.

So why is this occurring?

In part it is because of the problematic Quranic verse 4:34, which is misused by some men to claim superiority over women.

It's an evasion to say beliefs in male headship are only cultural when the framework of guardianship asserted in understandings of this verse inform roles and expectations of women.

The recent video of two women, reportedly belonging to the fringe Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, discussing the apparent permissibility of symbolic wife-disciplining has highlighted the schisms in diaspora Muslim communities struggling to understand how to adapt to a modern Western context.

While the controversial video was widely condemned by Muslim community leaders who reject the notion that Islam permits violence against women, the Hizb women aren't entirely misinformed.

It doesn't negate the fact some Muslims do believe it is permissible to discipline your wife.

They are getting their information from readings I've heard myself in the Uncle-led mosques of the western suburbs.

These are the circles not privileged by the affluent or middle-class intellectuals. They are ordinary Muslims.

Male authority controls relationships, Mosques

Imams need to be as vociferous in condemning these interpretations in their private groups to the working class faithful as they are in public to the media.

The application of this verse is filtered in the advice given to women who are told to tolerate, "be patient" or acquiesce to male authority at every stage of their relationship — or to think of their husband as a CEO who should lead the family.

It's reinforced by spaces and religious settings where girls are directed to sit at the back and literally take up less space.

Women from Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia say it is permissible for husbands to gently hit their wives. ( YouTube: Hizb ut-Tahrir )

For young, second-generation Muslim couples, these wedding speeches by Imams are a kind of shrugging formality.

They are modern kids whose lives move in the wider Western culture, but are still shaped enough by their culture to pay respect to their heritage.

The rituals are formalities to be borne on family insistence before getting to the biryani and the honeymoon.

The fact that these beliefs — in female obedience and male control — even exist in 2017 is what is driving the majority of young, upwardly mobile Muslims away from religion or to understand and reformulate their religious identities in a more hybrid and fluid way.

But there are also the vulnerable ones — the first-generation migrant women and those in traditional communities who live in these worlds — communities of conservative religious orthodoxy, where to marry out or even divorce is a form of social suicide.

They are the women who seek religious mediation to survive and are trapped by soul-crushing interpretations and attitudes. They are the ones who require help.

The triple challenge facing Muslim women

Yet, in trying to help them, Muslim feminists face a triple challenge, similar to other women of colour.

They are working to dismantle sexism in their communities, while simultaneously dealing with the accusation of exposing their communities to Islamophobia.

The possibility of external abuse is often used by those with power in these communities to shut down debate.

Visibly public Muslim women are forced into a binary — to display a powerful front to discount the racialised narrative and public appetite for Muslim women as only oppressed, silent victims.

Prominent Muslim women like Yassmin Abdel-Magied are often shouted down when they speak out about gender reform. ( Supplied: Daniel Boud )

At times, though, this can appear to be whitewashing the very real suffering of women in traditional communities with little power.

This is why Muslim discussions around gender reform are not public in Australia: because of the fear that they will act as ammunition for racialised violence against already deeply marginalised communities.

The right-wing witch hunt against prominent outspoken Muslim women such as Yassmin Abdel-Magied and the judge-and-jury-style judgement of every Muslim community infraction aids this fear.

It's like every family dysfunction being exposed in an unsafe public space when what is what is needed is slow, reparative therapy, as well as greater, broader support.

The challenge for Muslim feminists is great. They need to respond to the heavy policing and discrimination their communities experience, and impact visibly Muslim women the hardest.

They also have to fight patriarchy in their communities.

In 2017, it's not enough to say Islam does not condone violence. We must also challenge the idea of male authority or guardianship that normalises the violation of women's rights.

Islamic feminist narratives have been watered down

And it's not a lightly held idea. It's no accident feminist narratives have been watered down by male religious figures to affirm traditional gender roles.

Petro-dollar exported Saudi wahabbi literature populates bookstores and informs the world's madrassahs.

Many Muslim women are told to think of their husband as a CEO who should lead the family. ( Rocco Fazzari )

This reactionary, sterile Islam — itself an 18th century reform movement — strips the tradition of its art, aesthetic, variegated schools of thought, history and culture, and has made it difficult to assert alternative interpretations.

It scapegoats feminism as antithetical to the culture and an alien, Western, colonial affront, and ignores the feminist narratives embedded in the tradition itself.

Similarly, aggressive, masculinist political Islam of the Hizb variety seeks to reject what is Western, at the expense of evolving the tradition in line with its own axis and make it meaningful in a modern multicultural framework.

It affirms Muslims as "other" or "victim" in the right wing imagination — rather than rightfully seizing a seat at the table and creating new artistic and political narratives as a native hybrid of the evolving Australian story.

Islam is a faith littered with powerful women

Why is there so little discussion, for example, of the Prophet's 25-year relationship with his first wife Khadija?

The fact that Khadija was a powerful businesswoman and widow with children, 15 years his senior — a woman who was both his protection, support and employer — is deeply destabilising to the patriarchal paradigm.

This blended unconventional family is radical even for today and a powerful role model for the work-life juggle of the modern woman.

This is why verse 4:34 is so heavily fixated on so deeply. It's the only explicit concession to male authority in a faith littered with powerful, non-conformist women.

The push for equality in Islam should not be dismissed as irrelevant or minor.

In my life, I see many people speaking up in religious circles to question and challenge readings that normalise unilateral divorce, unequal spaces, the inferior legal status of women and resistance to female leadership.

But now, those who believe Islam can be meaningful in a modern Western context and provide a strong family framework for women and men to experience equality, respect and mutual support, need to speak up and speak often.

They need to do so without being howled down or pigeon-holed.

What is at stake is too important: the opportunity for every young girl to realise her highest potential and value in the world.

Sarah Malik is a freelance journalist and writer. You can follow her on Twitter: @sarahbmalik.