This story demonstrates why questions about the ultimate extent of sharia encroachment in the West are neither unfair nor merely academic: Stonings continue to occur under Islamic governments, as do executions by other means for "adultery," which so often includes what are actually cases of rape. Moreover, we have already seen that even in Britain, there has been no successful separation of the allegedly "good" sharia from "bad" sharia, and it continues to exist as an instrument to oppress and exploit women.
"Iran confirms stoning sentence against adulteress: report," from Agence France-Presse, November 29:
TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran's supreme court has confirmed a sentence of death by stoning against a woman convicted of adultery in the southern city of Shiraz, a newspaper reported on Saturday.
The woman identified as Afsaneh R., was also given a second death sentence for murdering her husband with the help of a man identified only as Reza, who had an affair with her, Etemad Melli newspaper reported.
The details of this case only highlight the absurdity inherent in imposing an arguably worse method of execution for adultery than murder.
The report said the supreme court had in August confirmed verdicts first issued in April, but gave no reason for the delay in making the decision public.
It said Reza had also been sentenced to 100 lashes for having an illegitimate relationship and 15 years in jail for collaborating in murder.
Under Iran's Islamic law, adultery is still theoretically punishable by stoning, which involves the public hurling stones at the convict buried up to his waist. A woman is buried up to her shoulders.
An Iranian rights group said in July that eight women and one man had been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery over the past few years and urged the Islamic republic to halt their executions.
In August, the judiciary said it had scrapped the punishment in Iran's new Islamic penal code, whose outlines have been adopted by the parliament but its details are yet to be debated by MPs before final approval and coming into effect.
The judiciary also said stoning sentences against several convicts had been suspended and commuted to either lashes or jail terms but it was not known if any of the nine convicts were among those whose lives have been spared.
In July 2007, the Islamic republic drew international outrage by stoning to death a man convicted of adultery, Jafar Kiani, in a village in the northwest of the country.
What is this "good Sharia?"
The really scary thing about this is that even if the story is taken at face value, it's entirely likely that it could have been very different and its real meaning could have been lost in translation. By 'translation' I don't mean 'English to Persian,' but rather 'Muslim-ese to infidel-ese.' This woman could have waved hello to her neighbor (a sexual affair under Sharia), been beaten horribly by her husband when her neighbor came over to help, and then she could have killed him in self-defense, never mind the hypocrisy inherent in sharia whereby it punishes sex outside of marriage with the death penalty but sanctions pimping little girls into sex slavery, rape inside of marriage, and the rape of infidel women.
1) Will the protests of the "international community" build and eventually compel the Iranians to change the sentence?
2) If not, will there be a world outcry after the sentence is carried out?
3) If so, will the people of the world associate this barbarity with the tenets of Islam?
Not entirely off-topic. About 500km north-east of Iran lies the Uzbek city of Bukhara. An Austrian adventurer wrote of his travels in Iran and the then Soviet Central Asia in 1924-5, including Bukhara, having been there earlier during the first World War. One extract, indicating the morals police were alive and well in that part of the world, long before 1979:
“The available space inside the town is restricted, and every inch of it is turned to good account. This has kept foreign intruders at bay. Even the excess native population is forced to quit the town and seek new means of livelihood in the outskirts. Probably no oriental city has ever been so completely in the hands of religious fanatics as Bukhara. The power of mullas and muftis was unlimited. As late as 1919, when I was [previously] in the city, officers of the faith used regularly to patrol the streets and bazaars, hold up the passers-by, and cross-question them about any chance surah of the Quaran or the laws of the Shariah. If the luckless Believer could give no satisfactory answer the officer would order his police escort to arrest and carry him off, issuing a warning to any others who might prove inadequately versed in their sacred book. Punishment took the form either of a beating or a fine.
The city had eleven gates, which were closed at nightfall, and any movement to and fro within the city after this hour was forbidden under heavy penalty. From the outbreak of the World War till 1920 the city gates were closed all day as well, and no one could pass through without producing a special permit. Nowadays [under the Soviets] the gates are open all day and night and there are no restrictions whatever on people’s movements."
[Gustav Krist, Through the Forbidden Land, 1939, p.197]
What sort of a system is it that makes Communism look good by comparison?
Let's see - Somalis stone a 13 year old rape victim, the Iranians are going to stone this women and what do this two incidents have in common?
Sharia law and Islam.
Coming to a dhimmi country near you..........
sharia law might jsut be a good thing for the usa never again will women yell rape or sexual harassment in the work place. and think about it if ur kids defied u then u could have them publicly stoned or killed in a public setting
and of course all the women would look strikingly beautiful in black veils and robes.
Vatican Thanks Muslims for returning God to Europe
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-36765320081128
Are they stupid?
MBR-
Thanks for posting that.
where is AM to tell us this has nothing to do with Islam ?
The sentence of death for adultery is to prevent sins forbidden by God and even christianiy forbids adultery.The sentence does not discriminate against any gender but applies to both equally.
To safe guard against innocent people being committed of this crime,There have to be three witnesses of this crime and accusers admmit to the act freely only then they are given the sentence of death.
people in media and Islam phobic smeering Islam.
Talking about barbarisms,look at your soceity.
Fathers are raping their own flesh and blood.
Preists are malesting defenseless children.
Homosextuallity is rampant.
Millions of illegitimate children.
Alcohal and drugs paralyzing and devastating the family structure.
Murder rates highest in the world.
I could go on and on......
Explore Islam at
http://www.99islam.com/
This is grotesque, mohammedans really have no shame.
How dare you talk about barbarism after Mumbay
How dare you talk about homosexuality when the worlds biggest gay fundation is muslim (al-fatiha) ?
How dare you talk about pedophilia when your profit (and piss be upon him) was a rapist and pedophile ?
How dare you talk about crime when your book promotes terrorism?
How dare you talk about drugs when Afghanistan is the world biggest producer of Opium , when Morroco floods Europe with Hashish ??
I could go on and on too ...
you sick pervert
Yeah, dude, get a legitimate 7th-grade education so that you too can recognize your statements as nothing more than the projection that everyone who posseses even the logical faculties of a brain-damaged 5 year-old does. We do not need incestuous pedophiles who murder their daughters, practice polygamy, lower women to mutilated, undead-corpse, sex-slave baby-factory parasites, or who brainwash themselves 5 times a day and say creepy prayers before they have sex with their cousins, or who go to sleeper cells to contract billions of strains of mosque foot fungus in their hands and faces and to support the Taliban every Friday, you fascist thug. Go be a good Muslim and rape your 9-year-old niece, beat your incestuous Sharia sex slave, mutilate a baby, and screw a goat, but whatever you do, don't ever own up to your own failures as an individual or as a society, and never, ever admit that every creature comfort and piece of medical technology you use, and every good work of art are produced by infidels, as is everything else of any value in this world.
MBR, good post. Yes, the "religious police" in Muslim society is nothing new.
I especially note your comment:
"What sort of a system is it that makes Communism look good by comparison?"
So far as I am aware, there has only been one group that has willingly submitted itself to Soviet rule, and that was the Armenians in the 1920s.
By that time, they can have had few illusions about what they were accepting. So why did they turn to the brutal Soviets, of all people?
Well, they had just endured almost forty years of vicious genocide in Anatolia, as part of the "Turkification" of that land. Fellow victims included Greeks, Jews, and Levantines (Europeans who had spent decades or centuries in the region). What these groups all had in common is that they were not Muslim. Turkey is now less than 1% non-Muslim. Hundreds of thousands were systematically killed, during both the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, and the regime of Attaturk.
By the 1920s, only a small remnant of Armenians survived in the region. Even the oppression and brutality of Communism looked pretty good after the wholesale slaughter of Islam.
A source which seems credible claims that during the Balkan wars and leading up to 1914, Muslim civilians were slaughtered in large numbers across that region.
I presume that word of this got back to Ottoman Turkey and have concluded that a much larger revengeful slaughter of available Christians ensued.
This is about innocent Armenians, innocent Balkan Muslims, and the impotence of racism and revenge.
David wrote:
A source which seems credible claims that during the Balkan wars and leading up to 1914, Muslim civilians were slaughtered in large numbers across that region.
I presume that word of this got back to Ottoman Turkey and have concluded that a much larger revengeful slaughter of available Christians ensued.
.................
David, the Armenian genocide in Turkey dates from the 1880s to the 1920s, coming in waves of "deportations" and mass murder interspersed with comparative lulls. Toward the end of this period other Christians and Jews were also targetted, in a deliberate campaign of religious cleansing. The horrendous finale came when the prosperous city of Smyrna, with its large Greek, Armenian, Jewish and Levantine populations, was utterly destroyed in 1922.
The idea that these were "revenge killings" dating from the nineteen-teens is spurious. An excellent book on this subject is Peter Balakian's "The Burning Tigris". It is a very harrowing read.