Eleventh-Hour Reprieve
Islamic justice, as it is represented is fiercely biblical, a throw-back to the darkest ages of humanity. It is justice as seen primarily by a people steeped in tribal measures to maintain a balance between complete barbarity and a victim's pay-back. Violence seems very close to the surface in Muslim society. The kind of violence that is directed for the most part against the most vulnerable in society. That would be women, of course.There is a simmering violence seated beneath the surface of Iranian society that is directed also at those who defy the precepts as laid down by the Ayatollahs of a pious society that does not allow of the quaint notion that there are other religions due respect, that there are segments of society that are born with an alternate sexuality, that there is a natural inclination among the young to question. These are all insults to be vigorously, thoroughly tamped down.
The square peg must be bludgeoned into the round hole. If the fit is an awkward one, and refuses to sink into acceptance it must be extirpated; jailed, beaten, tortured, and if that does not work, then death is the reasonable alternative. In this society the biblical-era injunction of an "eye for an eye" is not brutal but rather a rational response to maintain order in society.
Brutal adequately describes the action of a young man whose advances, spurned by a young woman, avenges his honour by throwing acid at her face, blinding her. Raw justice in Iran permits, through a reading of Koranic law, that the victim may demand retribution in kind.
So Ameneh Bahrami, mourning the loss of her eyesight, insisted that her attacker, Majid Movahedi must be deprived of his.
Yet on the very cusp of Movahedi's punishment to surgically deprive him of his eyesight, Ameneh Bahrami thought better of her original demand.
"I did it for my country, since all other countries were looking to see what we would do. I struggled for seven years for this verdict to prove to people that the person who hurls acid should be punished through 'qesas', but today I pardoned him because it was my right."The young woman spurned barbarity, conscious that the world outside Iran viewed such judicial measures as contrary to humanity's goal of achieving universal human rights. Hers had been violated by a pathologically raging predator. She made the decision not to emulate her attacker, even under the guise of Sharia law that would legally permit it, in Iran.
"However, she demanded blood money for her injuries", explained the Tehran prosecutor in charge of the case.
Labels: Iran, Islam, Sexism, Societal Failures
posted by Pieface @ Monday, August 01, 2011
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