| Submit your comments on this article |
| Axis of Evil |
| Iranian reformists seek to end stoning |
| 2002-10-31 |
| What're they going to replace it with? Drawing and quartering? Iran's reformists are seeking to end the practice of stoning for adultery and other offences, a reformist leader said Wednesday, while not saying if another form of death penalty might be substituted. "Concerning punishments that are enshrined in the Sharia (Islamic law), we cannot say that they are unconstitutional, but we think we must make some revisions in certain domains," Mohammad-Reza Khatami said in an interview published on the Internet. "That's because we look like idiots when we pretend it's still A.D. 622..." Khatami, brother of reformist President Mohammad Khatami and head of the main reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front, said on the Womeniniran.com site there was currently "a judicial debate" over the use of stoning."Some religious leaders believe we can replace stoning with other punishments. As a result, we are considering the use of other punishments." "These include kicking them to death, gutting them, flinging them down a long flight of stairs, or putting them in a sack and beating them to death with a club." "The Imam (the Islamic regime's founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini) believed that if something damaged the image of the Islamic regime, we should not practise it," he said. Stoning is used to punish mainly adulterers, but the president's brother questioned whether the Sharia's strict precondition for dealing out such a punishment — the testimony of four respected witnesses to an adulterous act — was always respected. Sometimes you have to cut a few corners, or you won't get to have any fun at all... The death penalty is implemented frequently in Iran for a range of crimes, but usually by hanging. Men sentenced to stoning are buried up to their necks in a pit, and women up to their armpits, but according to Islamic tradition they are acquitted if they succeed in pulling themselves free before they are killed. In one case last year a 35-year-old woman convicted of acting in pornographic films was stoned to death for adultery and "corruption on earth" in Tehran's Evin prison where she had been held for eight years. The Entekhab newspaper said she had been tracked down after investigators noticed the serial number of an electricity meter that was in the background of a scene in one of her films. I don't think I ever even noticed if there was an electric meter in a skin flick I watched, much less that the serial number was. And they say Westerners are perverts...! |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #1 Using this technique it wasn't difficult tracking down Alec in "Smart Alec" as a sock salesman at Robert Hall..... |
| Posted by: Jack 2002-11-01 05:24:53 |