Did you stop reading after the sentence you quoted? Or maybe you would have liked a longer discourse on tacit consent and evolutionary/revolutionary regime and soceity changes in both democratic and authoritarian countries?
I’m going off of pure memory here, but didn’t the Iranian people ‘vote’ out the Ayatollah’s and place a more moderate man in charge, but even in doing so they could not release the stranglehold of the Ayatollah’s and their fundamentalist, misogynst (sp?) ways.
I also know there is what my late grandfather would have called the ‘whipping shack’ in more rural areas (the byline was Tehran, but it’s hard to tell if that is where it happened…the article mentioned ‘locals’, but that could be a Tehranian neighborhood or a remote village). Generally speaking, I don’t approve of such things. But sometimes, when heinous acts like this occur, I will actively look the other way. That’s the non-judicial punishment aspect of my last post. The ass-wipes in Pakistan got it wrong. But if this guy doesn’t end up spending his entire life in a rotten, stinking cesspool of a prison or swinging on the end of a rope, then off to the whipping shack with him.
[And before anyone starts on my about ‘whipping shack’ being racist, grandpa was black, and according to him, this was how they handled black-on-black crime in the south when the authorities didn’t give two shits about what happened to them]
No. But from where I sit, the rest of your post is of dubious relevance. I imagine I simply don’t know what your point is.
I do not see what jargon and esoterica have to do with your above remark. Did you say:
or not?
How exactly does any of your following text in the post I replied to qualify this remark to make it any more palatable and accurate?
You said that if the people want changes, there already would be changes. If this is no longer your position, kindly make this clear. If this is still your position, I would appreciate it if you would respond substantively to my criticisms rather than accuse me of deliberate misrepresentation, that is to say, taking this quote out of the context of the rest of your post.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding something fundamental about your case, but I fail to see the relevance of this entire paragraph both to your original complaint or to my remarks.
Maeglin, if the majority of the people wanted to change the fundamentalist oppression, they would. In an authoritarian regime, it would likely have to be a vast majority.
I don’t believe there is enough support in these countries for such a change, not at this time. I’m sickened by any soceity that marginalizes and IMO, enslaves vast sections of its population (in this case ~50%). In the wishful thinking category, I wish that all women subjected to such institutionalized* treatment by men (not that there is any reason for this treatment when uninstitutionalized) were to be taken away from these men, such thinking would die out. That’s the day when I hit Lotto and Megamillions in the same week.
If I rambled, as I’m apt to do while multitasking and giving the SDMB the least amount of my attention, I apologize.
*Institutionalized does not necessarily mean national government. Again, there are religious sects within Christianity here in the US which believe nearly the same thing. They just don’t have the power of national law backing them up.
That is not the point. I was basing my comments entirely on the 1st yahoo story cited in the OP. That brief story had four main points:
1). Man chops off daughter’s head because he thought she was raped.
2). She was examined and found not to have been raped.
3). He did it to defend his honor.
4). Locals are calling for the man to be hanged, but only he can ask for the death penalty.
I pointed out that I saw a tie between points 2 and 4. It is my opinion that if she had been found to be raped, then the locals would not have been calling for him to be hanged, since “Rape often goes unreported in Iran where the conservative society sees it as bringing shame on the victim and family.”
If you disagree with my opinions, fine, but you can’t change the impression that I got when reading that article. And I used the term “locals” because that was the term the article used (local people to be precise) and I was trying to limit my target to those involved, not all Iranians.
AFAIK, even if they’re not necessarily granted equal status in all situations, women in Iran are a long way from being “a little more than slaves”…We"re not talking about Saudi Arabia, here…
It seems logical to me that they would have checked that during the post mortem, since apparently the uncle was suspected to have raped her. That’s very relevant in this situation.
And if I were a journalist reporting this case I would certainly have mentionned too : “and actually, she had not even been raped”. I’m not sure why it surprises you…
Why exactly would you assume that if she’d actually been raped that they (the locals) wouldn’t have reacted the same way they did?
They abbhored the act of cutting off your daughters head. You know nothing about what was in the heart and mind of ‘those locals’ nor the journalist.
I’ve read and reread that original article, and I see nothing that even hints at the reaction being different if the girl had actually been raped.
The whole ‘defending her honour’ was his crazy reasoning, not the reasoning of ‘the locals’ who called for him to be hanged.
So, are you saying that because he used defending his honour as an excuse, that the locals would defend that right of his? Because if you are, you know a hell of a lot more about how they’re feeling than I do.
What you’ve done is read in between the lines to see what you want to see. It’s called making an unsubstantiated assumption.
I am absolutely making assumptions! I have never been to Iran and I only know a few Iranians. But when I read articles like this or this or even this, which dodgedly states:
"It’s a fact that, to be absolved from guilt, the raped woman must have shown some sort of good conduct, in the sense that what befell her must be something beyond her control. ", then I start to make assumptions about Muslim cultures. And I have gotten to the point that I believe that if that girl had been raped then there wouldn’t be any public outcry from the village it happened in.
So if you want to change my opinion, convince me things like this are not common in the middle east and I may reconsider.
Well, of the three examples you gave, one happened in Nigeria, one in India, and one in Pakistan. Nigeria and India aren’t in the middle east, and for Pakistan, it’s debatable.
You know, in the US, most women who are raped don’t report it either, because they’re ashamed of it, and a woman who’s raped will have her name dragged through the mud, and people will say she asked for it. This isn’t just an Iranian thing, or a Muslim thing, or a Middle Eastern thing, and it doesn’t mean that you can assume that a community in Iran would support the killing of a 9 year old girl who was raped.
Anahita, attrubution for Rilchiam. You’re welcome.:
You have your hated phrases, I have mine. Which technicality is that, the U.S. Constitution? NOBODY gets off on a “technicality” any more. We have a harmless error doctrine which precludes anything but serious constitutional error from upsetting a verdict or judicial determination. Juries screw up sometimes, that is not a technicality, that is the right to a trial by jury.
As for Iranian ‘justice’ - it is the best argument for the U.S. justice system I have seen in a long time. Except shari’a in lots of other countries, where it just keeps churning out these outrageous cases regarding women wherever and whenever it is applied.
Yes I insulted radical Islamic ‘justice,’ let he / her who is without contempt for religious fundamentalists cast the first stone. Ah, not literally.
[Aside] Why do Christian fundies get pounded, but people walk on eggshells so as not to criticize backwards actions by Islamic nutcases? I’ve read multiple references to Timothy McVeigh as a “Christian” on this board, which he wasn’t.* Unless white guys who are not Jewish are automatically Christian. Now, I guess, a similarly unreasonable standard of guilt by association will not be applied to this sick fuck of a kid killer who perceived that he was following Islamic law. Dammit, if you are going to do something wrong, do it consistently.
NOTE: I hate all radical fundies. At least I am not a hypocrite. A hateful, religiously-insensitive SOB, maybe, but not a hypocrite. [/A]
*Cite yourself. McVeigh was not a religious man, and had no religious animus. He was motivated by Waco, but had no affinity with the Davidians. People have consistently misrepresented his faith, or lack thereof.
I’m not in the mental condition to participate in this thread further. I have an emergency family situation that has me completely panicked and frightened.
You’ll have to continue without me. My regrets, sincerely.
this says of the law in Iran: “…Article 76. The testimony of women alone or in conjunction with the testimony of only one just man shall not prove adultery but it shall constitute false accusation which is a punishable act.”
Cite for Iran that describes their stoning procedure.
And that still doesn’t mean that, had the girl actually been raped, people wouldn’t mind if the father cut her head off. In a lot of cases where women who are raped get accused of adultery, it’s on the theory that it wasn’t really rape…it was consentual sex. I’m not saying the attitude is right, but it exists. In this case, though, it was a 7 year old girl. There was no question that, even if she did have sex, she didn’t consent to it…it’s not even a possibility, she was 7.
What bothers me is the assumption some people have here that the Iranians somehow approve of killing little girls who get raped. Look, nobody here is saying that what the father did was right, and nobody is saying that women have political and social equality in modern Iran. There is bias, and the laws aren’t equal. But that doesn’t mean that Iranian women don’t have any rights, or are just chattel.
No it doesn’t. And that was never the argument. I expressed my opinion and Anahita claimed I had no basis for having that opinion. I was merely trying to show I had a basis for why I felt the way I did - that the concepts of guilt, justice and punishment differ vastly from what I am used to.
And just because I feel that a lynch mob would not have formed had the girl been raped in no way, shape or form says that I feel Iranians somehow approve of killing little girls. That is a huge assumption on your part.
No, but why do you think the lynch mob wouldn’t have formed? Why do you think peoples’ reactions would have been any different, if it was found the girl had been raped?