Shadows of the Devils in Shrouds
By Nicole Sadighi
Iran
Press
27 years ago a sinister cloud swept across the bright day of Iran’s
sunlight and brought with it a hurricane of nefarious and heinous afflictions,
contaminating it with a rotten plague. This ancient land, which was the
birthplace of the very first declaration of human rights in 500BC, is now home
to backward uncivilized and savage decrees. It is quite astonishing how the
regime continues to survive; however it is not very difficult to observe where
their weaknesses lie.
The mullahcracy of the Islamic Republic in Iran has managed to stay in
power by running the country with brutal Islamic laws and penal codes that
have enforced limitations on the lives of the Iranian people, prohibiting them
their fundamental human rights and controlling them by enforcing a reign of
fear. The regime is based upon a belief that modern government should closely
resemble the theocratic Muslim community of the early years of Islam in which
the only legitimate rulers are the clergy. This primitive ideology has been
wholly based upon a foundation of hate and abhorrence of all that is
“unislamic” and the ruling clerics have an entourage of believers that are
motivated by inciting hatred of their chosen enemies, namely America the Great
Satan, Israel and all non-Muslims, in particular those who embrace western
ideals. In fact they hold a great deal of resentment for a population so
diverse in religion and ethnic backgrounds, that they have declared half the
world as infidels!
However the most exploited recipients of this sinister detestation have
been the Iranian people who have for 27 years suffered intimately in every
aspect of their lives, everything from what they do, what they say, where they
go and even what they think and believe. Above all the women and the young are
at most risk of being the targets of the regimes wrath where they have
suffered many afflictions.
Sadly once again there are reports of yet another Iranian woman who has
been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery and under the Islamic
Republic’s penal code this constitutes death by stoning. The “Etemad
Daily” reported that the woman, named only as Soghra was found guilty of
having an affair with her husband’s friend and as though stoning to death
was not enough she has been given a 15 year jail sentence for aiding her lover
to kill her husband.
Stoning is an age-old punishment and was once practiced in some parts of
the world, but who would ever think that today, in this new millennium there
are still people who are governed under such uncivilized and brutal laws? Such
reality in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which particularly targets women is
not as widely publicised. Under article 102 of the Penal Code: “states that
married offenders (adulterers) are liable to stoning regardless of their
gender, but the method laid for a man stipulates that he be buried up to his
waist, for a woman up to her neck”. Article 104 “the stones should not be
so large that a person dies after being hit with two, nor too small as to be
defined as pebbles so that they do no damage at all, but must cause severe
injury”. Not only, does stoning require burying a woman deeper than a man to
avoid escape, it is also used against women more often than men. There is an
irony in this cruel punishment. Even though the practice is applied to both
men and women, because it is usually a punishment implemented in regards to
offences like adultery, women are susceptible to be blamed and accused for
social misbehavior offences. Therefore, it is more usual that stoning will be
implemented against women than against men.
It is categorically evident that the Mullahcracy of the Islamic Republic
has no concern for life and is demoniacally aroused by death and the crimson
color of blood, it has an unscrupulous apatite for the merciless sufferings of
women where Misogynist doesn’t even begin to express the absolute loathing
they have of women.
According to WFAFI since the inception of the Mullahs rule in 1979 tens of
thousands of women have been executed, mainly for their opposition to the
policies of the ruling clerics and too many of those were pregnant. The
cruelest kinds of tortures have been afflicted on female political prisoners
who oppose the regime and are repeatedly raped, tortured and mutilated by
dissection of limbs and gauging out eyes, whilst internationally the ruling
clerics try to deny any responsibility, especially when there are occasions
for a photo op in front of the international media, such as during the last
so-called parliamentary elections where they attempted to display a jovial and
democratic society.
Before the Islamic revolution, the National Iranian Oil Company “NIOC”
produced over 6 million barrels of oil per day. Since the gas and oil industry
has been politicized, today they are hard pressed to produce just over half
that amount, in the meantime the population has doubled in size. Whilst there
is economic hardship, high unemployment, gross depreciation of the Rial and
high inflation the revolutionary government has been pounding its finances to
develop weapons of mass destruction to fuel violence and thus nourishing all
elements of instability for their own survival.
Meanwhile, in Tehran alone there are approximately 84,000 homeless women
and girls who are subjected to sexual abuse and violence and 90% of those ends
up in prostitution and city brothels or as young as 10 sold in the human
trafficking market. The exposure of sex-slave networks in Iran has shown that
many mullahs, police and judges are all involved in the abuse and sexual
exploitation of the women and given the totalitarian rule most organised
activities are known to the authorities. The most fantastic irony of this
tragedy is that government officials are in the business of buying and selling
young girls whilst emposing legislations against it! Women who have been
arrested for prostitution say that they are forced to have sex with the police
only later to be sentenced to death for “corrupting” society. Of course if
a man rapes a 10-year-old girl and takes her as his wife, he is a good Muslim.
In religious dictatorship’s like Iran, one cannot appeal to the rule of
law for justice for women and girls and trials are taken place with lack of
due process, citizens continue to be tried and sentenced to death in the
absence of sufficient procedural safeguards. Iran is a state run by
paedophiles, rapists and murderers and the only measure of the regime’s
success in controlling society is the depth with which they suppress the
rights of women. The ruling mullahs have enforced sadistic rules and
punishments on women, enslaving them in a gender apartheid system of
segregation, forced veiling, second-class status, lashing, hangings and
stoning to death.
Women and girls have no guarantees of freedom and rights and they live in a
land ruled by blood lusting Misogynists who detest every characteristic of
women. Under their version of Sharia law women are dehumanized in every aspect
where they are physically, psychologically, intellectually, and morally
inferior to men. The malice for women is engraved within the realms of the law
that have encouraged and empowered men’s oldest chauvinist aversions, where
wives, sisters and daughters are disposed to being at the receiving end of the
men’s frustrations, their insecurities and anger with life. Dominating and
inhibiting women has become the solution to men and society’s failures,
where women have become the targets of their sense of supremacy.
Yet atypically the Iranian women’s freedom movement could be their most
damaging weakness and a chink in the armour. Their resentment for women, in
particular in western democratic societies where they deem the liberal women
as the crippling force of society is perhaps their biggest fear, the
deficiency that could be the handicap of their rule. Inasmuch as they know
that where there are free women, there is democracy, where you have an
empowered woman, you have freedom of choice and freedom will for all, where
there is land of equality then there is liberty and the failure of despotism.
The Mullahcracy has been all too foolish in exposing this trump card and their
strategy of rule, thus the one sure way that this regime would lose its grip
on power would be the administration of freedom for Iranian women like Soghra
that would unquestionably illuminate and thus consume the Shadows of the
Devils in Shrouds.