Non-consensual sex with your wife - a crime in the USA, likely not one in Iran (Since this law was only recently changed in N. America).
There’s probably a whole lot of other actions relating to the unequal (socially if not legally) status of women. Bigamy?
I have an impression from the bazzar sales mentality that a lot of consumer protection/fraud laws are viewed differently in that part of the world; “buyer beware” is more the norm rather than a legal obligation to be fair and honest.
Similarly, a US citizen in Iran is breaking the law by failing to file with the IRS. Few other countries have this provision, so I imagine an Iranian living abroad does not have to file with the “IIRS”.
ModernPrimate, this is not a case of “BACKWARD MUSLIMS”. Many of the laws and social attitudes are common to all societies, including European ones. IIRC the defence of “catching them in the act” was considered a good defence in Spain for killing the wife or her lover; assault and or even murder of the daughter/sister and her unapproved boyfriend was common and not taken seriously even if not legal in Europe too. It took a huge leap in women’s rights and an assault on the status quo before things like domestic abuse were recognized for the serious crimes they are and properly dealt with by authorities. It’s not surprising that in countries where challenging the status quo is tantamout to heresy, women’s rights are still in the dark ages. This would apply to Iran, and to some non-muslim dictatorships too.
Provocation has long been established as a partial defence to murder at common law. Sudden loss of self control has always been accepted as a circumstance which permits the imposition of a lesser crime. Finding a partner in the act of adultery with a another or finding someone abusing your child are the classic examples given.
Good point! Iran, like many other Muslim countries, permits a man to have more than one wife in accordance with shari`a law (although Iranian law is somewhat unusual in requiring the formal consent of the first wife before a man can take a second wife, with the result that polygamy is quite rare in practice because most women oppose it).
Polygamy, of course, is illegal everywhere in the US no matter whether all the involved parties consent to it or not.
In addition, marriage between first cousins is quite common in Iran: in fact it’s traditionally favored, and AFAIK something over one-quarter of Iranian marriages still fall into that category.
First cousins can marry in some US states but not in others. However, I think that the full-faith-and-credit principle requires any state to recognize such a marriage if it was performed in a state where it’s legal, so I don’t know if that would count as an act that’s criminal in the US but not in Iran.
Marriages between uncle and niece are also recognized in Iran, and are also traditionally considered a desirable type of match, especially among Iranian Sephardic Jews. I don’t think uncle-niece marriage is legal anywhere in the US, but I’m not sure.
Post-ETA: These are probably closer to the sort of thing that Mosier was asking about: namely, an act that would be seen as “Eww, abominable, we can’t permit that” in the US but as “WTF, who cares about that and why would you bother criminalizing it” in Iran.
Color me quite surprised that uncle/niece marriage was so recently (and still, in some communities) widely regarded as desirable in the Jewish tradition, btw.
Color me fucking flabbergasted that in fact that practice is apparently still accommodated in some US jurisdictions, and amend my statement in my previous post about the absolute illegality of uncle/niece marriage in the US: :eek:
What about corporal punishment and other discipline methods for children? Best I’ve been able to find is that corporal punishments by parents must be “reasonable,” but I suspect that it’s possible that reasonable in Iran may well be “Call CPS now!” in the US.
I have always found it fascinating that in the U.S. a woman and another man can fool a second man into thinking their child is his…take his time, energy and financial resources to raise that child and, if the second man ever finds out the child isn’t his that he is still legally required to support the child.
I know the arguments in favor of the way things are…but this just seems very wrong to me. I can see why cultures are lenient in allowing the death of the people responsible for this…despite the rolly eyes of other posters.
I do not agree that they should be allowed to be killed…but the status quo now is not really enlightened either.
Just a quick nitpick that I’ll try not to turn into a hijack: Punishing an adulterous wife should not be confused with punishing an innocent child. The courts generally require a man to continue being a father to a non-biological child with whom he has a longstanding parental relationship, because it would not be fair to the child to destroy that relationship just on account of the mother’s bad behavior.
If a man requires the fact of biological paternity in order to be emotionally capable of performing the responsibilities of fatherhood, then it’s up to him to confirm independently that the child is biologically his before undertaking the paternal relationship. It would be extremely cruel to a child with whom you’ve had a close paternal bond to say “Sorry, kid, but I just don’t feel the same way about you any more because of this hitherto-unsuspected fact about you that is in no way your fault, and I don’t want to have anything more to do with you from now on. Blame your mother.”
Of course, Canadian law says you cannot arbitrarily exit that relationship even if it’s widely acknowledged the child is not yours, if the only reason for the relationship with child is that you shacked up with the mother and the child came with her.
California law says that if you did not know and respond to the paternity suit (improperly or carelessly delivered summons, for example) once two years have passed you cannot get out of it at all for any reason including DNA, even if you did not know of the case. Talk about lack of incentive to deliver papers properly (which is what the Social Services dept of California has been accused of…)
To avoid derailing the thread too far, let’s look at the same question in Iranian family law. AFAICT, Iran actually uses more or less the same principle as Western countries of default paternity, called amarat al-firash or “the rule of the bed”, which decrees that a child born in wedlock is automatically assumed to be the child of the husband, who is legally responsible for him/her.
The only way to get out of that responsibility (sometimes) is to formally deny paternity in a shari`a court, which is a whole other can of worms.
So, to stay on-topic with the original theme of this thread: it looks as though the act of refusing to support a formerly acknowledged child because it turns out to have a different biological father…
can be a crime in the US (if the courts have ordered the man to continue his formerly-accepted paternal responsibilities), and
can be not a crime in Iran (if the shari`a courts accept the denial of paternity, although I believe they have some latitude in assigning responsibility for the child’s maintenance anyway based upon the child’s best interests).