Stoning to Death! Who’s gonna throw that stone?

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani’s face has become known to the world as she is under threat of being sent off, to a terrible death. She already received 99 lashes in front of her son; she has been in jail for the last five years while awaiting her execution. She was about to be stoned to death but international opposition might spare her, only to get a more humane execution.

What was her horrible crime? Is she a serial killer? Did she torture anyone? What could she possibly have done to deserve such severe punishment?

 Although never proven, her terrible crime was having sex with another man while married. She signed a confession but that does not mean she did it. She claims that she is innocent and she was forced to sign it. I can see these people forcing anything on a person.

Even if it was true and she did cheat on her husband, it is hard to understand the cruel punishment.

God knows how many wives the husband has! It is OK for him to sleep with more than one woman but his wife is punished in the worst possible ways for something as simple as sex.

I want to corner the guy who accused her in the first place and tell him               “Hey it’s just sex! Get over it!”  

I do respect different cultures and their traditions but not when these so called traditions terribly oppress the female gender. I would be equally upset, if a man was under threat of death by stoning only for straying.

Cheating on the spouse is bad of course. It is hurtful for the party that has been betrayed, it is frowned upon, in many societies. However, gathering up some people and stoning someone to a slow, painful death over it, is taking disapproval to a whole different level.

It makes me wonder how they can throw that stone. I bet that it is not easy,  for an ordinary person to kill someone, just because the law justifies it. The action of killing when not under threat of being killed shall not come easy. Many people shrug even when they see a bug, as they can’t step on it. It makes me wonder what kind of a society is filled with people who are ready to throw stones at another human being who cannot even cover her face in defence, as her hands would be tied. Capital punishment by stoning is applied by regular people. The stoning is initiated by the relatives of the person that is being executed.

I do not believe that Iranian people are crueler than others. Rules and regulations in societies are meant to bring peace and order for the people of that society. When those rules are making members of the society merciless, what is the point of order? Organized crime has a sense of fairness, yet is still completely illegal, as order is maintained thru the most brutal actions.

Here in a legal system a woman’s chastity is forced upon her by threat of death. It sounds like the kind of thing the Mafia would do, yet this is totally within the laws of Iran’s legal system. Even from a religious point of view it is difficult to imagine that God almighty would want one of his creations to seize to exist, at the hand of others because she strayed. It is difficult to separate compassion from spirituality. Islam suggests that one will be judged after death, therefore everyone will be asked to explain reasons behind actions.

I wonder how do they imagine themselves explaining:

• 99 lashes,
• five years in jail,
• attempt to kill by stoning,
• arrest of relatives of lawyer (as he defended her and might have alerted other nations only to change the form of her killing into a more humane one)

 All these in the name of religion?

When time comes, it shall be difficult to justify these callous actions to the Divine!

 

Sources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10579121