Iranian Muslims commit another atrocity and outrage against justice:
Two sisters - identified only as Zohreh and Azar - have been convicted of adultery in Iran. They have now been sentenced to be stoned to death.
Adultery is a crime punishable by death in the Islamic Republic of Iran, in accordance with the canons of Islamic Sharia law. The Iranian Supreme Court has upheld the stoning sentence.
As horrifying as this is here's the paragraph that reveals the depth of the depravity of Iranian system of Islamic justice:
Zohreh and Azar have already received 99 lashes for "illegal relations." Yet they were tried again for the same crime, and convicted of adultery on the evidence of videotape that showed them in the presence of other men while their husbands were absent. The video does not show either of them engaging in any sexual activity at all (emphasis mine).
Their crime is non-existent, their trials a miscarriage of justice, and their sentencing a barbarity. All those who believe in human rights and human dignity should protest against this sentence.
But, the article goes on to note, thus far the American left in general, and feminists in particular, even those who promote feminist concerns globally, have remained silent about this case, as they have with others like it. Now, whether they've actually been mute in this instance, I cannot say. I certainly haven't seen anything about it in the news or on the left-wing websites I sometimes visit. If the left has suddenly lost its voice then maybe it's just a temporary condition, but surely if something as savage as this had happened in Israel they would have been in immediate full-throated fury. Why does there seem to be a reluctance on the left to speak out against the brutality perpetrated against women in the Arab/Islamic world?
I think that perhaps there are several reasons:
- The worse the rest of the world appears the better American society looks by comparison. This is unacceptably incompatible with much of leftist ideology which teaches that America and American capitalism is the source of most of the evil in the world.
- The left doesn't want to say anything that would incite or justify American hostility toward others because they're afraid it may contribute to a bellicosity which might lead to war.
- To condemn Iranian society would implicitly conflict with the cultural relativism accepted on the left which holds as a fundamental axiom that all cultures are equally noble.
So, rather than risk making American society and culture look superior to another or risk weakening the reluctance among the American people to engage in another conflict in the Middle East, they simply set aside their principles concerning human dignity and human rights and tacitly acknowledge that those principles are superficially, and tendentiously, held.
RLC