[A] spurned suitor poured a bucket of sulfuric acid over [Ameneh Bahrami's] head, leaving her blind and disfigured....
Courts usually order families of the accused to pay "blood money" for the crimes. But Bahrami insisted on the punishment. She had several meetings with the head of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, who tends to favor less strict interpretations of Islamic law.
"Shahroudi really pressed me to demand blood money instead of retribution. He explained that such a sentence would cause lots of bad publicity for Iran. But I refused," she said.
ADDED: Surely, Shahroudi must know that Iran gets bad publicity for these "blood money" punishments -- which look more like our tort remedies. It's a crime. Put that man in prison for a long, long time if you want our respect.
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22 comments:
Who cares about respect? If blinding this a-hole in retribution deters evern one other man from dousing another woman with acid, I call it good.
Personally, I don't think that it is enough punishment.
Even the proposed punishment will be inadequate as lacking symmetry.
Even in theocratic Iran, the individual is sacrificed for the expediency of the State.
Where is your Justice now, Ms. Bahrami?
Will someone please explain to me why people who are capable of such cruelty are not fit subjects for thermonuclear annihilation, or worse, why they should be allowed to possess nuclear weapons? By what measure of intellectual arrogance does our newly elected President think he can reason with such people?
Will someone please explain to me why people who are capable of such cruelty are not fit subjects for thermonuclear annihilation,
I'm all for it. Just make sure you get the ones who don't deserve it out of the way first.
"At any time, a woman is at risk of repudiation. Divorce - male-initiated, incontestable, and brought about in a matter of days - can bring the immediate loss of her children to the husband’s family. Children under Islamic law are perceived as the “substance of the male,” merely incubated by the female body without any biological or genetic contribution. Children thus belong to the male, and Islamic law reflects this by allocating custody of children to the father. It is thus part of a woman’s concept of her own sexuality that it is inextricably linked with the production of children; she will love them but forever risk losing them through repudiation. To keep her children, she must not risk repudiation by her husband. In a culture that has not encouraged romantic attachments leading to marriage, and discourages affection and companionship between spouses, the fear of losing her children often sustains the woman’s efforts - culinary, domestic, and sexual - to please the husband, at least until the children are into their 20s. This fear of repudiation is stronger today, because of the 1979 restoration of the father’s rights to child custody."
From a fascinating (and scary) scholarly article about sexuality in Iran.
My family lived in Iran when I was a boy. Iranian girl next door got married. To an old man. She was about 13. It was a business transaction. Blew my mother's mind.
A sad fact, indeed, for me to have to say it's at least encouraging to see an Islamic state doing something about the crime (although maybe I should distinguish from an intra-family "honor killing" that is tolerated many places).
But this?
Will someone please explain to me why people who are capable of such cruelty are not fit subjects for thermonuclear annihilation, or worse, why they should be allowed to possess nuclear weapons?
Yikes!
Seems to me that logic is susceptible to be turned around on you.
I'll take doors #1, 2, & 3. Just enough acid that he'll be too ugly to get a protector in prison.
I agree with DBQ, I think blinding is too good for this guy.
Too bad this stuff is red meat for the knuckle-dragging "Lets Nuke Iran" morons. I'm all for stopping Iran from getting nukes = short of war.
Some time back there was a report on television about a serial murderer in Iran. He had killed a number of Iranian streetwalkers and had been convicted of the crime. There was a mass movement to have him pardoned. The feeling was that he was acting out some Koranic injunction to purify society. I never saw a follow up report and don't know the final resolution of the case....I am sure that there are all sorts of things I could agree with an Iranian about--eat your veggies, love your children, don't drive drunk--but there remains about their culture something foreign and ugly and incomprehensible.
Personally I have no problem with them just putting a bullet in the suitor's brain pan.
Sorry but animals like that don't have any business wasting our oxygen.
I disagree that Iran gets bad publicity for the blood money payments. It's a fairly common thing in Iraq, too. And yes, looked at one way they are very much like civil court settlements for cash.
Yes, putting the man in prison for a very long long time would be good.
What I don't get is that he's supposed to get five drops of acid in his eyes to make him blind.
What happened to the *bucket* that he dumped over this woman's head?
The silly assertion by the journalist that violence does not deter violence but only leads to more of it is naive and stupid, frankly. The punishment to be punishment needs to be harsher... be it stealing years and years of someone's life by putting them in prison, or returning two buckets of acid for one.
Why do we view years of prison, years of a person's life taken, as something so civilized, and view blinding someone who caused that much extreme pain and agony as horrible?
I don't think that Iran gets bad publicity for harsh punishment so much as Iran gets very bad publicity for extreme punishment for non-offenses... stoning rape victims and hanging gay young men.
rcocean said...
I agree with DBQ, I think blinding is too good for this guy.
Too bad this stuff is red meat for the knuckle-dragging "Lets Nuke Iran" morons. I'm all for stopping Iran from getting nukes = short of war.
5:14 PM
If you're not willing to go to war then you're not serious. Might as well say that you are in favor of Iran having nukes. Israel will take care of it anyways.
I have no desire to invade Iran to prevent them from having Nukes. Nor am I willing to drop a nuclear weapon on them.
If air strikes on the nuclear facilities and/or international sanctions can't dissuade them, then so be it. We have to face reality, we can't handle 3 wars at once.
the person in question should be cut up in little pieces and fed to pigs in front of his eyes
of course, I have never been particularly sensitive
What we can't handle is three occupations at once (more if you count South Korea.) I'd argue that we can't handle one occupation at once. Iraq looks like it will be a marginal success. Afghanistan isn't and never will be; it's the true quagmire.
The real lesson of power isn't to occupy, but to overthrow and walk away in indifference. However tempting using nuclear weapons is, we simply can't be the first to use them in the 21st century. We can, however, be the second and should ensure that everyone knows it.
All that aside, before we get all indignant over the barbaric sub-humans of Iran, how about those of Somalia, South Africa, well, most of Africa, Russia and so forth? Do we really want to be the world's policemen? I say no unless our economic interests are directly threatened. Crass yes, but any other way lies madness.
(Plus, consider this; if we allow the US government to micromanage other countries, what's to stop them from using those same justifications domestically and expanding the already expansive federal power? Yes, local governments can be and are corrupt, but the corruption of the federal government makes those pale in comparison. Look only to the former Soviet Union to understand what highly centralized power and subsequent corruption does to a country.
In this light, even if the various federal bailouts had economic justification, which I don't think they really did, they were and remain to be a horrible and extremely destructive idea. It probably wasn't good idea to allow banks to consolidate so much, but neither was it a good idea to allow Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Congress and the Executive Branch to consolidate so much power either.)
Come on now. Acid in the eyes is hardly barbaric or even harsh treatment.
I mean, it's not as if they poured water on his face, or made him stand naked, or kept the lights on to keep him from sleeping, or made him listen to Marshall Mathers songs. After all, you don't hear the ACLU complaining, do you?
I'm against any new war that requires ground troops. Democrat politicians proven with the Iraq War that they reserve the right to "change their minds" when war becomes unpopular, and withdraw their support of the troops.
If there was ever a recipe for disaster: people will quickly lose interest in joining the military if they feel like even the very people who sent them to war in the first place will abandon them as soon as it starts to go badly. Why risk your life to be a pawn for politicians? We simply can't send young men and women into battle and then go "oops!"
Anyway, arial bombings in Iran, or nothing. And there's no way ANY US President is ever going to pre-emptively nuke any country, so that's off the table. Sorry, Israel.
Richard: As EDH said, "people who are capable of such cruelty" includes "us".
Indeed, it includes every population on Earth.
The people who are capable of such cruelty are man.
...
I am, however, tempted to agree that his punishment is perfectly fitting (and thus "just"), and that being locked in a cage for years is less "just" even if it offends delicate sensibilities.
It's not as if his acid-pouring was accidental or in the heat of passion or the like; premeditated, planned, callous mutilation and blinding
By all means, pay it back in kind, both as a fit punishment and as a deterrent for others.
(Unconstitutional in the US, of course, since it's "unusual" - but only unusual in the US context, since what is "usual" is by definition a localized, changeable thing.
[I am not at all sure it's "cruel" in a way that death or life imprisonment really isn't.])
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