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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Iranian Capital Crimes are Acts of Lunacy

executions pyramid in Iran

John R. Houk
© October 18, 2011

A United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) email describes secret executions taking place in Iranian prisons.

The news story shows just how reprehensible justice is in Shia-Islam Iran. Executions happen without notification of lawyers or families. Most disgusting is that a significant amount of Iran’s death row inmates are juveniles.

To bring these secret executions into perspective we are talking about hundreds a year. The year 2011 is not over yet and 146 known inmates have been executed in Iran. That number is just the number of those executed in secret and a notification has been provided after the fact. Who knows how many have been executed without notification?

At the very end of the article Iran provides its reasoning for executions:

Tehran says the death penalty is essential to maintain law and order, and that it is applied only after exhaustive judicial proceedings. (Iran secretly executing hundreds of prisoners: UN; AFP)

Now check out the crimes that are capital offenses according to the article:

Murder, rape, armed robbery, drug trafficking and adultery are among the crimes punishable by death in Iran. (Ibid.)

In my estimation murder is the only crime that should have a death penalty. In Iran one is sent to death row with an unknown date of execution for rape, armed robbery, drug trafficking and adultery.

Now let us see just how ludicrous the death penalty is for rape and adultery. Those convicted in rape sent to the gallows are more likely to be the victims rather than the perpetrators. Why?

Under Islamic law, rape can only be proven if the rapist confesses or if there are four male witnesses.  Women who allege rape, without the benefit of the act having been witnessed by four men who subsequently develop a conscience, are actually confessing to having sex.  If they or the accused happens to be married, then it is considered to be adultery.

… [Several Quranic Suras and Hadith showing the idiocy of Islamic justice]

Rape is virtually impossible to prove under Islamic law (Sharia) and even in more moderate countries.  If the man claims that the act was consensual sex, there is very little that the woman can do to refute this.  Islam places the burden of avoiding sexual encounters of any sort on the woman.

A recent fatwa from a mainstream Islamic site confirms this rule and even chides a victim of incest for complaining when she has no "evidence"


Since it is incredibly unlikely that a child molester will violate his victim in front of "four trustworthy men", Islamic law amounts to a free pass for sexual predators.

Islamic law rejects forensic evidence, such as DNA, in favor of testimony.  An interesting situation thus sometimes develops in cases where a victim alleges rape and the man denies that sex even took place.  In the absence of four male witnesses, rape cannot be proven.  The woman's testimony then becomes a "confession" of adultery.  She can be stoned, even though the male is unpunished, since he never "confessed" to a sexual act!

Also, there can be no such thing as rape in marriage, even if the husband has to hit the wife in order to bring about her submission.  Another recent fatwa reminds a woman, she "does not have the right to refuse her husband, rather she must respond to his request every time he calls her." (Islam Q&A, Fatwa No. 33597). (How a Woman Must Prove Rape; The Religion of Peace)

Islamic men usually get a pass for a sex-crime because it is impossible to prove under the guidelines of Sharia Law; thus the rape victim is on death row under the accusation it was the woman’s fault for enticing fornication.

In Iran adultery is a death sentence but again it is the woman that faces the music more so than the man. The man is included in the penal code for a death sentence; however the law is rigged for the male adulterer to have extenuating circumstances that the Iranian law looks the other way.

I find it amusing that Islamic apologists condemn Iran’s death penalty for adultery because Sharia Law calls for 101 lashes rather than death. Sharia even calls for “moderate” lashes. The reality is those 101 lashes often lead to death and they are not so moderate.

Even so Iran just outright sentences a gal to death by stoning for the accusation of adultery.

The AFP article fails to mention one capital offense that is not only in Iran but in many Muslim nations. That horrendous offense is the act of apostasy; i.e. leaving Islam for another religion like Iran’s Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani that has a death sentence over his head for leaving Islam to be a Christian Pastor in the Iranian House Church Movement.

JRH 10/18/11
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Iran secretly executing hundreds of prisoners: UN

10/17/11
AFP

UNITED NATIONS — Iran's authoritarian regime has secretly executed hundreds of prisoners, according to a new UN report detailing growing rights abuses in the Islamic republic.

The mysterious executions at Vakilabad prison in Mashhad in eastern Iran were highlighted in a report compiled by Ahmed Shaheed, the new UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran.

Shaheed, who assumed responsibility for the mandate on August 1, billed this as an interim report cataloging the most recent trends in the human rights situation in Iran.
The report, which is to be presented to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, details a raft of abuses from the denial of women's rights to torture, but the most shocking data was the skyrocketing rate of executions.

The report, obtained by AFP after first appearing on the Foreign Policy website, said 200 officially announced executions had taken place in 2011 with at least 83, including those of three political prisoners, in January alone.

"Furthermore, authorities reportedly conducted more than 300 secret executions at Vakilabad prison in 2010," the report said.

"Vakilabad officials, in violation of Iranian law, allegedly carried out the executions without the knowledge or presence of the inmates' lawyers or families and without prior notification to those executed," it said.

"It has also been reported that at least 146 secret executions have taken place to date in 2011."

Shaheed also noted that four percent of executions stipulated no charges, that 100 juveniles were on death row, and that more than 100 executions this year alone were for drug-related offenses.

Human Rights Watch counted 388 executions in Iran in 2010, while Amnesty International put the figure at 252, ranking the Islamic republic second only to China in the number of people put to death last year.

Tehran says the death penalty is essential to maintain law and order, and that it is applied only after exhaustive judicial proceedings.

Murder, rape, armed robbery, drug trafficking and adultery are among the crimes punishable by death in Iran.
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Iranian Capital Crimes are Acts of Lunacy
John R. Houk
© October 18, 2011
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Iran secretly executing hundreds of prisoners: UN

Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved
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