generalspeaking

Public Entertainment

Sharia law as practised in the Islamic Republic of Iran is pure biblical-era vengeance, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". It represents raw barbarism. All the more so that the state has institutionalized that barbaric vengeance as a public display where the public can gather and is invited to gather, to witness the execution of a human being. Iran has the distinction after China of executing the second highest number of people as state-sanctioned punishment for misdeeds.

China enjoys the additional fillip of being known for harvesting organs (for surgical-medical transplantation) of those that the state executes for their crimes. A practise it has no intention of stopping, even after the covert enterprise has become public knowledge and an international shaming. To practise an outlawed religion like Falun Gong in China is considered a crime against the state punishable by long prison sentences and sometimes death.

Iran, on the other hand, incarcerates, tortures and executes some of its citizens for the very same reason; practising a forbidden religion like Baha'i, disowning Islam and choosing to practise Christianity under Sharia law merits a death sentence. Capital punishment in Iran is merited by committing murder, rape, child molestation, sodomy, drug trafficking, armed robbery, kidnapping, terrorism and treason.

Since Iran is a major supporter of terrorism through its proxy militia Hezbollah, it is only what it perceives as 'terrorism' freely interpreted from opponents of the state that would be included under the systems of law and crime and punishment. Iran's threat to the world order is well enough known, through its determination to illicitly produce nuclear weapons that would fit neatly on its intercontinental ballistic missiles.

A young man known as Bilal had killed another man when they were both 17 during a street brawl in a northern town of Nour seven years ago. Charged with the murder of Abdollah Hosseinzadeh, Bilal was sentenced to death. Under Sharia law, a death sentence can be lifted if the family of the person accused of murder can offer enough money to exempt the person who committed the crime from that ultimate punishment.

Within Iran a wide variety of Iranians respected as artists, soccer players and coaches, and the residents of the town where the murder took place, all attempted to convince the family to pardon Bilal and to accept the blood money offered by his parents. It was all to no seeming avail. Abdollah's mother was embittered by the tragedy of a loss of another son years earlier through a vehicle accident, leaving her and her husband with no sons.

Bilal just happened to be a student of the father of the young man he had killed during the fight. An episode of a popular sport program on Iranian state television had pleaded with the Hosseinzadeh family, and particularly Abdollah Hosseinzadeh's father who had been a former soccer player of some repute, to forgive Bilal. To no avail. Samereh Alinejad, the mother of Abdollah had said in an interview she intended to resist all pressure.

She informed the Shargh newspaper that her son had appeared to her in a dream, asking her to forgive his killer. Even so, she had determined she would not relent. When Bilal was led blindfolded to the site of his execution in the town square, he was placed on a chair on the gallows, the noose placed around his neck, while he sobbed in anguish. That was when Samereh Alinejad slapped his face, then forgave him. She and her husband removed the noose from the young man's neck.

And Bilal's mother hugged the dead boy's mother in delirious gratitude. He has spent seven years in prison, awaiting the completion of his death sentence. Now commuted from that death sentence through a change in mind by the mother of the boy he had killed when he was himself a boy, his family's blood money offering to save his life means he is now destined to continue serving a sentence for that bloodshed, in jail.

What can one say for a society labouring under the fundamental tribal-clan ancient punishments meting out death for death, other than cruel and unusual punishments reflect a cruel and unusual religion's set of laws that institutionalize state murder for punishable offences receiving far less harsh penalties elsewhere in the world. A society that makes a public spectacle of taking a life. A society where money can in effect, buy back a life.

Labels: Crime, Human Relations, Iran, Islamism, Justice, Sharia

posted by Pieface @ Monday, April 21, 2014