Legalizing murder
Anyone with a lifestyle deemed immoral by the rigid standards of Islam is fair game for murder

April 20, 2007
iranian.com

There is good news for those believers with vigilante tendencies: it is now legally acceptable to kill people who act “immorally” in Iran.  If before it was merely tolerated now it is totally, legally acceptable, to murder in Iran as long as you murder the “right” people: those who drink alcohol, fornicate, play cards, or do any drugs are all fair game.

Especially if they are not mullahs who do it on the sly.  In fact you don’t even have to prove that they were acting immorally you can simply intuit. That is enough as long as they are simple lay people not connected to a big wig mullah like Rafsanjani whose offspring are known to have a penchant for partying.

What amazes me is that this little bit of news will go largely ignored and surely it will not offend Iranians living inside or outside Iran as much as the film 300.  No, our opposition leaders and our citizens inside and outside Iran are much more incensed by any offensive propaganda against our glorious, largely undocumented, Achaemenid past than by the bloody murder of our contemporary compatriots for the crime of having sex or whatever else the Islamists consider immoral.

The Supreme Court of the Islamic Republic of Iran has acquitted murderers, who were declared so by lower courts, on the grounds that their victims were “immoral.”  This sends the message more clearly than ever that anyone with a lifestyle deemed immoral by the rigid standards of Islam is fair game for murder.  And Iranians abroad come and go speaking of Michelangelo—it seems so appropriate to misquote T.S Elliot in this context.  

Surely I myself and perhaps most of my dear readership will fall under the category of immoral people in Islamic Iran.  I will probably fit the bill in many Catholic nations as well only the Dutch and Scandinavians may find yours truly anywhere close to possessing a moral character.

How can we, the silently immoral majority, walk down the streets of Tehran not to mention Kerman where the murders took place after this verdict?  No one cares for my safety and yours no one cares for the couples who were brutally murdered some by stoning: that favorite Islamic way to punish sexual offenders.  In Islam even adult consensual sex is a crime punishable by death and now apparently by murder free of the confines of judicial red-tape.  While Ahmadinejad is becoming the next Ghandi in the region championing the cause of standing-up to the increasingly hated Americans, our country is moving to the right of Attila the Hun in social matters condoning the meting –out of justice by our spiritually charged brethren.

Meanwhile my so called like-minded compatriots care more upset about how Xerxes is portrayed in some fantastical movie than by the possibility of me being picked up, taken to the desert and stoned walking down the streets of Kerman.  All kinds of “Don’t bomb Iran” petitions and declarations have flourished recently but no one cares about the likes of me who are now fair game for death by stoning or drowning or any variety of gruesome executions.  They don’t need to bomb us for God sake we are a nation in ruins.  The ruins we ourselves have made.  We care more about ancient ruins -- how Xerxes is portrayed by Hollywood is what we care about.

Oh and Guantanamo.  Our noble laureate of a lady, miss kotdamani Ebadi, who seems to have used her million dollar prize money on skirt suits rather than anything else, who chooses to pick on prisoner treatment in Guantanamo at the hands of Americans than what is happening to her own people in the no doubt familiar halls of the Supreme Court in Tehran. Shame on you Ms. Ebadi if you don’t lift a finger this time! The Americans have enough lawyers worrying about Guantanamo, they have Dershowitz and the Civil Liberties Union, but we Iranians only have you.

Those of you so quick to form coalitions against Hollywood, where are the petitions against this last ruling of our Supreme Court that condones vigilantism against people like you and me. This ruling is the most horrendously shameful ruling any court could issue.  Forget our global image this ruling is a final blow to our humanity.  We are letting these mullahs-- ever more confident because a bunch of Europeans, suffering from historic amnesia, are taking their huffing and puffing seriously and appeasing them-- legalize murder.

Forget Xerxes, the defeat of the Persians by the outnumbered Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae  was not nearly as devastating to our people than this little ruling of our Supreme Court legalizing the murder of people who act in an ‘un-Islamic’ fashion.  Let us choose our battles carefully it is not bad to put Hollywood right and to draw petitions against war with Iran but our first and foremost enemy is this mullah regime.  Please let us not forget it. Comment