Yassmin Abdel-Magied triggered a debate over Islam and feminism after a fiery exchange with senator Jacqui Lambie on Q&A. Picture: ABC

Yassmin Abdel-Magied triggered a debate over Islam and feminism after a fiery exchange with senator Jacqui Lambie on the effects of sharia during ­Monday’s Q&A on ABC TV.

“If she’s right that ‘Islam is a feminist religion’, how come such terrible things are done to women in its name?” Mr Abbott said.

The Australian revealed ­yesterday that the federal government paid for Ms Abdel-Magied to tour some of the world’s most repressive Islamic regimes last November, promoting her book about being a Sudanese-­Egyptian-Australian Muslim woman who wears the hijab.

Mr Abbott said Ms Abdel-­Magied was “entitled to her view” but “she must have been wearing a blindfold on her taxpayer-­funded tour”.

Her views of Islam as a feminist religion also appear to be at odds with her co-member of the Australian government-funded Council for Arab Australian Relations, Joumanah El Matrah.

In a 2015 submission to Victoria’s Royal Commission into Family Violence, Ms El Matrah, who is also chief executive of the Australian Muslim Women’s Human Rights Centre, said there were “significant problems” in how Islam was interpreted, which caused violence against women.

Ms El Matrah has previously declared that Muslim women and children would be “extremely ­disadvantaged” by any form of sharia court. “Among Muslims, the interpretations and application of ­Islamic doctrine in relation to women varies considerably and, given the diversity of Muslims globally, there is a lack of consensus as to the status of women, and this has a direct impact on their treatment in Islam,” she said. “Orthodox interpretative frameworks allocate women an inferior status to men and this directly affects marital and family relationships, rendering women vulnerable to violence and abuse.”

She said there were “significant problems of interpretation of Islamic doctrine relating to the status of women, how they are to be treated in the home and the level of control permissible by a husband over his wife”.

The Australian’s coverage of Ms Abdel-Magied’s speaking tour was raised in parliament ­yesterday during a debate about section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, on the same day parliament also debated a bill proposed by Senator Lambie to restrict the wearing of the burqa.

Greens senator Nick McKim launched an attack on this newspaper yesterday for publishing details of Ms Abdel-Magied’s tour of the Middle East and North Africa. “It’s a straight, simple character assassination by The Australian, as they always do … when someone dares raise their head above the parapet and make comments with which they disagree,” Senator McKim said. “It is a disgusting, race-baiting rag.”

Liberal backbencher Eric Abetz described Senator McKim’s statements as “outlandish”. “It is a statement of fact that in many of the parts of the Middle East where Ms Abdel-Magied visited, women would be stoned to death for seeking an education and people even suspected of being gay are thrown off buildings,” Senator Abetz said.

Mr Abbott commended The Australian for bringing “common sense to this discussion”.

Senator Lambie said yesterday Muslim women had been “emboldened” by her call to ban the face-covering burqa. “I’ve been told by this person who came to visit me and I trust and respect very much that these Muslim women have been emboldened and given hope by my public comments and the provisions within this bill,” she said during a speech in favour of her bill to ban the burqa yesterday.

The ban is linked to the nat­ional terrorism threat level, kicking in when the threat reaches “probable”. The threat level is currently at “probable”.

Commenting on the debate about feminism and Islam, Australian Muslim Women’s Human Rights Centre chairwoman Tasmeen Chopra said anti-women issues in relation to Islam were “not text-based”.

“To be honest, in Australian Muslims’ lives right now the argument about feminism is not front and centre,” she said.

Sheik Shady Alsuleiman, who attended Malcolm Turnbull’s Iftar dinner last year with Ms Abdel-Magied and has made comments in a lecture saying gay people spread diseases, said last year that Allah gave “authority for men over women” but this meant that they must be “dutiful”.

Sociologist and feminist Eva Cox said there were good and bad parts of Islam and any other religion but that a “farrago of popular nonsense” was responsible for hijacking the debate about the protection of women as a means to impugn all Muslims.