Iranian Mother Stoned

[classicman]

An international campaign has been launched on behalf of an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning after being convicted of adultery.

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani's family says she has already been punished with a flogging of 99 lashes, The Guardian reports. Her 22-year-old son, Sajad, and 17-year-old daughter, Farideh, told the newspaper she committed no crime.

"She's innocent, she's been there for five years for doing nothing," Sajad said. "Imagining her, bound inside a deep hole in the ground, stoned to death, has been a nightmare for me and my sister for all these years."

Mohammed Mostafaei, an Iranian lawyer representing Ashtiani, said the sentence is illegal because it requires explicit witnesses to the alleged adultery. He said her death sentence was handed down after she was charged with killing her husband.

While she was acquitted of that charge, the court imposed the death penalty for adultery based on "judicial knowledge," which allows judges to make decisions based on their own feelings.

Mina Ahadi, an activist based in Germany, said that after she and Ashtiani's children launched the campaign she heard from the families of two other women held in Tabriz Prison and sentenced to death by stoning.

One was arrested at the age of 15 but not sentenced until she was 18, the minimum age for the penalty.

The stoning process consists of burying the victim up to their waste in the ground (woman get buried up to the chest), and they are pelleted with stones until they are dead, or manage to crawl out of the hole and live. Horrifying.

In another recent case, a man was stoned to death ahead of his pregnant love, who was forced to give birth to their baby before she faced the same fate.

Go here for more details about the troubling case of a mother being stoned to death for what most say is a coerced and false confession of adultery, made after she had been mercilessly whipped and imprisoned.

link



Do western customs/culture seem as effed up to them as this does to us?
How do you really interact with a culture that allows this type of thing to happen?

[spudcon]

You don't interact or negotiate with that kind of culture. They have no soul.

[Griff]

We have fundis in our culture as well but secular rule of law is pretty well entrenched, we hope. When folks talk about the need to get the government boot off our necks, we need to remember what kind of thinking is always waiting in the wings hoping for a power vacuum. It makes me careful about talk of a second, third, or fourth American revolution.

[dmg1969]

I don't think it gets any more concise than the way that spudcon said it.

Granted, this is the most radical form of Islam. That is one reason that we here in the United States should NEVER allow Muslims living in this country to practice shariah law (honor killings and the like).

[Sundae]

DMG there is a big difference between Shariah Law and honour killings.

And yes, many people outside of the US consider that having the death penalty is barbaric. Only 2 countries within the EU still practice capital punishment (Belarus and Latvia - and the latter only for war crimes).

Personally I think basing laws on a load of rubbish written thousands of years ago in a book that has been amended and translated and retranslated and translated again and interpreted according to the whims of the ruling classes to be ridiculously outdated. But then I read editorial columns in the right wing press here all the time fulminating that this country is going to the dogs simply because we don't do that any more, so it's still valid to some people.

[Undertoad]

Sharia law calls for the stoning to death of adulterers.

[Sundae]

Stoning to death of adulterers is not honour killing.
Honour killings are not part of Sharia law, they are remnants of tribal customs (as is female circumcision)

I know that Hadd offences include the death penalty - including such barbaric customs as stoning for adultery - but they are not necessarily imposed by every Islamic country.

They are the equivilant of the punishments laid down in Leviticus, which no Christian country (as far as I know) now follows. Or Israel for that matter. Of course I am opposed to the carrying out of Hadd penalties. But then I'm also anti capital and corporal punishment.

I am also against any country which is not predominantly Muslim accepting Sharia Law. But if you take out the Hadd penalties (which many countries do) it can actually benefit women in some parts of the world, as the Koran was very progressive regarding women's rights. More progressive than the Bible anyway. As I said, as an atheist I'm not much for following any religious law, but I'm also sensible enough not to accept it tempered with human rights and a fair justice system.

But then can any country really stand behind its justice system and say no mistakes are made?

[Undertoad]

They are not honour killings then, they are just killings. Via Wikipedia:

In accordance with hadith, stoning to death is the penalty for married men and women who commit adultery. In addition, there are several conditions related to the person who commits it that must be met. One of the difficult ones is that the punishment cannot be enforced unless there is a confession of the person, or four male eyewitnesses who each saw the act being committed. All of these must be met under the scrutiny of judicial authority.

For unmarried men and women, the punishment prescribed in the Qur'an and hadith is 100 lashes.[115]

The "four witness" standard comes from the Qur'an itself, a revelation Muhammad announced in response to accusations of adultery leveled at his wife, Aisha: "Why did they not produce four witnesses? Since they produce not witnesses, they verily are liars in the sight of Allah."[Qur'an 24:13]

Punishments are authorized by other passages in the Qur'an and hadiths for certain crimes (e.g., extramarital sex, adultery), and are employed by some as rationale for extra-legal punitive action while others disagree:

“The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication—flog each of them with hundred stripes: Let no compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by God, if ye believe in God and the last day.”[Qur'an 24:2] “Nor come nigh to adultery: for it is a shameful (deed) and an evil, opening the road (to other evils).”[Qur'an 17:32]

In most interpretations of Sharia, conversion by Muslims to other religions, is strictly forbidden and is termed apostasy. Muslim theology equates apostasy to treason, and in most interpretations of Sharia, the penalty for apostasy is death. During the time of Muhammad, treason and apostasy were considered one and the same; nowadays, many scholars differentiate between treason and apostasy, believing that the punishment for apostasy is not death, while the punishment for treason is death.

[Sundae]

Precisely.
I'm not a fan of Sharia Law, but at least it requires a trial (even though it doesn't meet Western standards of evidence).

Honour killings are simply murder.

[classicman]

A "trial" in the most liberal sense imaginable and then the decision is at the sole discretion of the "judge"...

Sharia courts do not generally employ lawyers; plaintiffs and defendants represent themselves. Trials are conducted solely by the judge, and there is no jury system. There is no pre-trial discovery process, no cross-examination of witnesses, and no penalty of perjury[95] (on the assumption that no witness would thus endanger his soul)[96] Unlike common law, judges' verdicts do not set binding precedents[97][98][99] under the principle of stare decisis[100] and unlike civil law, Sharia does not utilize formally codified statutes[101] (these were first introduced only in the late 19th century during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, cf. mecelle). Instead of precedents and codes, Sharia relies on medieval jurist's manuals and collections of non-binding legal opinions, or fatwas, issued by religious scholars (ulama, particularly a mufti); these can be made binding for a particular case at the discretion of a judge.

Sharia courts' rules of evidence also maintain a distinctive custom of prioritizing oral testimony and excluding written and documentary evidence (including forensic and circumstantial evidence), on the basis that it could be tampered with or forged, or possibly due to low levels of literacy in premodern Islamic society.[102][103] A confession, an oath, or the oral testimony of a witness are the only evidence admissible in a Sharia court, written evidence is only admissible with the attestations of multiple, witnesses deemed reliable by the judge, i.e. notaries.[104] Testimony must be from at least two witnesses, and preferably free Muslim male witnesses, who are not related parties and who are of sound mind and reliable character; testimony to establish the crime of adultery, or zina must be from four direct witnesses.[105] Forensic evidence (i.e. fingerprints, ballistics, blood samples, DNA etc.) and other circumstantial evidence is likewise rejected in hudud cases in favor of eyewitnesses, a practice which can cause severe difficulties for women plaintiffs in rape cases.[106] Testimony from women is given only half the weight of men, and testimony from non-Muslims may be excluded altogether (if against a Muslim). Non-Muslim minorities, however, could and did use Sharia courts, even amongst themselves.[107]

Sharia's rules on written evidence necessarily diminish the utility of written contracts to structure economic relations, and Timur Kuran has noted the predominance of a "largely oral contracting culture" in premodern Islamic society.[108]

In lieu of written evidence, oaths are accorded much greater weight; rather than being used simply to guarantee the truth of ensuing testimony, they are themselves used as evidence. Plaintiffs lacking other evidence to support their claims may demand that defendants take an oath swearing their innocence, refusal thereof can result in a verdict for the plaintiff.[109] Taking an oath for Muslims can be a grave act; one study of courts in Morocco found that lying litigants would often “maintain their testimony ‘right up to the moment of oath-taking and then to stop, refuse the oath, and surrender the case.”[110] Accordingly, defendants are not routinely required to swear before testifying, which would risk casually profaning the Qur'an should the defendant commit perjury;[110] instead oaths are a solemn procedure performed as a final part of the evidence process.

Sharia courts, with their tradition of pro se representation, simple rules of evidence, and absence of appeals courts, prosecutors, cross examination, complex documentary evidence and discovery proceedings, juries and voir dire proceedings, circumstantial evidence, forensics, case law, standardized codes, exclusionary rules, and most of the other infrastructure of civil and common law court systems, have as a result, comparatively informal and streamlined proceedings. This can provide significant increases in speed and efficiency (at the cost of the safeguards provided in secular legal systems), and can be an advantage in jurisdictions where the general court system is slow or corrupt, and where few litigants can afford lawyers. In Nigeria, where imposition of Sharia was highly controversial, even Nigeria 's justice minister was compelled to admit that in sharia courts, “if a man owes you money, you can get paid in the evening. Whereas in the regular courts, you can sit in court for ten years and get no justice."

more from wiki

[TheMercenary]

One groups barbary is another's religion or culture.

[Spexxvet]