If we are to create a better world - and, as the mother of a precious being, that is my main goal - we simply must keep our eyes open to the evil that will insidiously and assuredly infiltrate our potential paradise if left unchecked. Here is an unfortunate example of just such evil. There are those in the rabblerousing realms who unthinkingly support the Iranian government because it is ostensibly the "enemy of their enemy." These individuals do so at their own and our peril, because said "enemy of the enemy" is not our friend.
HANGED FROM A CRANE AGED 16
EXCLUSIVE JUSTICE IRAN STYLE: SICK GIRL EXECUTED BY JUDGE SHE DEFIED Her crime? She had sex with an unmarried man
By Susie Boniface
IT WAS exactly 6am and the start of another blisteringly hot summer day when 16-year-old Atefeh Rajabi was dragged from her prison cell and taken to be executed.
Every step of the way the troubled teenager plagued by mental problems shouted 'repentance, repentance' as the militiamen marched her to the town's Railway Square.
The Iranian judge who had sentenced Atefeh to death was left unmoved as he personally put the noose around her neck and signalled to the crane driver.
Kicking and screaming, Atefeh was left dangling for 45 minutes from the arm of the crane as the crowd sobbed and - under their breath - damned the mullahs.
Atefeh's crime? Offending public morality. She was found guilty of 'acts incompatible with chastity' by having sex with an unmarried man, even though friends say Atefeh was in such a fragile mental state that she wasn't in a position to say no."...CRUELTY OF SHARIA LAW
PENALTIES imposed by Iran's religious mullahs include:
THEF T: Amputation of hands or feet for persistent offenders.
ADULTERY: Death by stoning.
UNMARRIED SEX: 100 lashes.
CONVERSION TO RELIGION OTHER THAN ISLAM: Death.
SODOMY: Death for adults, 74 lashes for consenting child.
LESBIANISM: 100 lashes, or on the fourth occasion death.
HOMOSEXUAL KISS: 60 lashes.
RUBBING ANOTHER MAN'S THIGHS OR BUTTOCKS: 99 lashes - on 4th occasion, death.
10 comments:
You know--with all the evils being committed in the world from this group or that, you think the news of it would not bother me so much. I find it peculiar that while I can be angry with the evils that war causes to people en masse, the stories that really burst my heart like a balloon are the individual stories of this kind of blatant injustice.
First I get morose over it, then I have evil thoughts myself of what I might do to the "throwbacks" if I could get my hands on them. I could turn out more evil then them if I were to let that impulse get to me. Then I realise there is not much I can do about it. How do you change a whole people while trying to love and respect them as fellow human beings when they do these things or allow it to happen.
I know if such a thing were to happen near enough to me, I would be inciting people of righteous indignation to put the fear of "justice" people-style upon them. Until those people angry with the Mullah's really act against them and their system, such acts will continue by their consent. At least we are still free enough to let our "mullahs" and such know what we think and feel about their acts of commission or omission.
I think every barbarous act happening anywhere should be headlined in the communications media throughout the world, shaming every leader, every peoples where ever they live. Every other kind of news should be put on the back burner. Wishful thinking-I know. The media wouldn't unless forced and most people don't care unless it is happening near them or to their kind--who cares about what Muslims do, what Jews do, what Americans do, what Christians do etc. Are there so few decent and courageous people out there, no matter what their stripe to send a message that thunders around the world that says we won't take this crap anymore?!
I am sorry--I am getting overwrought here. I am at a loss to think how we could affect such things in an effective way that bypasses the "ignore-button". I personally don't care what regime, what nation, what religious or secular group is involved right down to the individual is called to account for their crimes. I ain't pickin sides and I don't belong to any side, except against the side of clear evil. I despise hypocrites equally, who point the finger at there enemy or at someone else when their own backyard is full of dead men's bones. Evil is Evil no matter where it arises.
Yup, the evil keeps coming and it's hard to ignore. So I got to get out of this foul mood and find something on the upside to raise my mood. Now if that "judge" were to be strung up by his genitals until he was dead...that might put a smile on my face.
I appreciate the sane responses. It's always amazing to me that someone somewhere will disagree with my condemnation of such despicable behavior and will turn my critique around to attack me. I'm getting so used to it that I'm delightfully surprised when I read messages such as the preceding two, albeit the subject matter is indeed morose and appalling.
It seems that common sense is not common at all, and we know that morality hardly follows along any common lines. How could we all possibly be related to the same genetic Eve?
Perhaps you should wake up and realize just one thing: not only are these people and their beliefs mind sick. There are many here who flock to Christian churches who are just as sick. We haven't imported this problem, it also lies within the minds of those who claim holiness. Priests who abuse children, parents and relatives who do likewise. Do not misunderstand -- I do not defend those you have accused, nor do I make excuses for them. Humanity is not the creation of some loving god, but rather animals who have been told they are the masters -- and those who are the most demented are the ones who raise themselves to positions of power through religion and politics and the rest follow like lemmings. I have no answers, but I see you driving yourself to right all these wrongs. Your knowledge and abilities are great, I admire you and your attempts, but you are flailing the wind and cursing the clouds. Yes, these atrocities should be revealed, but until we, as humans with conscience stop listening to the rantings of religious leaders, until we stop and know that we -- as individuals must think for ourselves, until we tear down the temples and burn the "holy" books, both in reality and in our minds, then we will suffer. Keep up the cause. In love, jakujo
Thanks. But I don't think I need to "wake up," as some would say I constantly criticize the "Judeo-Christian" culture.
"ADULTERY: Death by stoning."
If I'm not mistaken, the Old Testament of the Holy Bible subscribes the same punishment. However, this "law" is now ignored by churches, yet they selectively pull other scripture out of the Old Testament to fit their agenda - gay bashing, 10% tithe, no work on Sundays, etc... When I was a church leader, there were plenty of so-called "adulturers," yet they were treated more like recovering sheep, and no one threw rocks at them.
In 1996 I was ordained as a church layleader. In August 1997, I finally had the courage to liberate myself. I think what did it more than anything was not only the hypocrisy and moral selectivity, but also the fakeness and game playing.
I make no distinction between one religion or the next, as I consider all religion a danger to our future. That doesn't mean I don't believe in a supernatural force, I just don't believe in human-made religion.
Thus, whether it's female genital mutilation or protesting gays at military funerals, it's all the same - people acting irrationally and cruelly in the name of whatever God they happen to be worhshipping. Totally nuts.
Thanks, Goose. I always appreciate your comments, especially since you've been "on the other side."
Well I'd like to make a proposal here about the connection between the Christian Witch Hunts and the recent upsurge in Islam Fundamentalist Witch Hunts. Yesterday I hunted down "Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts" by Joseph Klaits (Indiana University Press, 1984)
"One way of understanding the witch craze is to see it as part of the many-sided war on popular culture waged by reforming clerical and lay establishments in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The chronology of witch hunting argues for this thesis, because the onset of large-scale witch trials corresponds almost exactly with the uneven spread of reforming impulses across Christendom. Witch hunts proliferated as the godly began to indoctrinate ordinary people with Christian theological teaching and concepts of moral behavior unknown to country dwellers of earlier generations. In Western Europe, trials for witchcraft became frequent after 1560, but in Poland and the Hapsburg lands of Central Europe, where reform commenced later, such trials were rare until after 1600. As for the remote world of Orthodox Russia, Muscovy, untouched by Western spiritual movements, conducted some trials for sorcery but, lacking the concept of the devil-worshiping heretic, never knew a witch craze. Although it is far from a complete explanation of the trials, the evidence for spiritual reform as a precipitant of the witch craze is very powerful." (p. 85)
And it was this same "uneven" Reformist Revolution of popular religion that also fueled the rise of Secular Capitalism, as documented by Max Weber.
A couple nights ago on Worldlink T.V. -- the nonprofit cable station -- there was a documentary made by a Muslim Arab-Canadian who detailed the dramatic increase in Islam Fundamentalism by documenting the use of elaborate separation barriers between men and women in the Mosques. These barriers did not exist just 10 years ago!!
What was fascinating was that her mom pointed out that traditionally in Islam the women NEVER WENT TO THE MOSQUE. I've read a great anthropology book of women in Morocco and you see how the women rule the residential neighborhoods -- often by communicating on the roofs while working! But they do not go to the mosques.
So just that the women starting going to the mosques in the West is a big "popular reform." And also a big movement in African Islam is the indoctrination of females into religious education schools. Islam brags how previously the females of Africa were illiterate but now, after becoming Muslim, they became very civilized.
Anyway now with Islamic cultures becoming more capitalist the "popular reforms" are climaxing into these same witch hunts that happened under Christianity.
I see this amazing dialectic in Minneapolis which has the largest Somali population in the U.S. Last week I went to this Somali restaurant that I had taken my girlfriend to back some 8 years ago. Back then it was very traditional and we ate goat. Last week there was the fancy pop music and these decked out waitresses in slick, skimpy, Western designer fashion. There was still one table with women in Burkas admist the new decore and "Total Makeover" of the restaurant. (Somali Islam has a dominant Sufi Lineage so it's very flexible!!) I still got the goat --- this time curry, and smaller portions, and much higher price, etc. More Capitalistic!!
haha
thanks again Acharya S.
The witch-hunt connection to the current state of Islam is a good one, as it is clear that Islam is in its Inquisition state. While speaking of a possible Disneyland in Iran, Jay Leno once joked that it would be a theme park about the 13th century (as I recall) and would be called "Futureland." In other words, Iran is in the Dark Ages.
Regarding the changes in the Somali restaurant, part of me is not pleased because I actually enjoy the diversity of culture - so long as its not brutal and compelled upon us through violence. It seems clear that in the U.S. the marketplace decides what will be - but that could be a double-edged sword. What if there becomes a massive market for labial skin, as there is for foreskins? Will we see the laws change against female genital mutilation, such that it will be practiced routinely? What a horror that would be! Male circumcision is bad enough.
I guess the more conspiratorial side to all this is that the U.S. has organized and funded radical Islamic funadmentalists in the Cold War crusade. Ironically Iran, under the CIA-back Shah, was much more secular and modern, but there was also a huge disparity in wealth and extreme violence from SAVAK -- the CIA-trained death squads. I know an Iranian poet who runs a coffee shop in Minneapolis and he spent 7 years in jail for one of his poems published under the Shah -- SAVAK did not like it.
So it doesn't necessarily take religious fundamentalism to have brutal authoritarian regimes -- the Neo-Nazi-CIA genocidal regimes of Latin America are fused with evangelical Christianity which is probably closer to the evangelical Zoroastrianism of the Shah -- a sort of high tech postmodern nihilism.
The same U.S. PROMOTION OF FUNDAMENTAL ISLAM is happening currently in Somalia as my friend, the radical journalist Jeff Nygaard has noted in his recent edition of http://nygaardnotes.org
The nation of Somalia has been without a functioning central government for the past 15 years. In 2002 a group composed of seven nations in the region—Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda—convened a Somali Peace and Reconciliation Conference in Kenya. The process undertaken by this group, called IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development) resulted in the election of "an all-inclusive government of national unity for Somalia" in 2004.
This government, however, remained "weak and under- funded" due to the failure to deliver promised international support, resulting in Somalia falling under the control of various militias. The result is that one militia, the Islamic Courts Union militia, last month assumed control of the Somalian capital of Mogadishu.
Did the United States have a role in this failure of the democratic process? Here's the lead paragraph from a Knight Ridder News Service story from June 17th:
"In early March, nine of Mogadishu's most prominent community leaders secretly flew to neighboring Djibouti and pleaded with U.S. military officials there to stop funding the warlords who were devastating the city. Backing the warlords, they said, would end up strengthening an Islamist militia with a shadowy radical wing.
"The Americans ignored their warnings, three of the Somalis at the meeting told Knight Ridder in separate interviews, and the community leaders' fears came to life this month when the Islamic Courts Union militia defeated the warlords and took control of the Somali capital."
The Kenyan newspaper The Standard, put it this way on June 22nd:
"[The] US policy of supporting a section of warlords has been carried out covertly and in brazen defiance of the IGAD framework.
"It is perfectly understandable for the U.S. to seek all ways to ensure the security of its own citizens by pursuing suspected terrorists.... The point, however, is that recent history, most notably the still unraveling war in Iraq, has demonstrated the dangers of unilateralism. But the application of the same gung-ho, poorly planned and single-minded adventurism in Somalia this year by the Bush Administration demonstrates the Americans have learnt little from Iraq."
When the Shah of Iran was in power the Shah's ONLY BANKER WAS ROCKEFELLER'S CHASE-MANHATTAN and Kissinger, a Rockefeller man, now is promoting a full-scale invasion of Iran to get back what was lost for Rockefeller when the Islam fundamentalists over threw the Shah.
It's a hard call Rockefeller-Kissinger versus Islam Fundamentalists (often created by the CIA)!
What a conspiracy!!
A good book to read (actually, graphic novel) about Iran before and after religious control is Persepolis: the Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi. It gave me a whole new perspective on the people of Iran as opposed to the government. It is in our library here, so check out your local library if you don't want to purchase it.
Hope I'm not giving too many book suggestions. I work at a library, so books are often my source of learning. And I probably tend to recommend them too often!
Thanks, as always, Acharya for more enlightning info!
Jenn
Post a Comment