By Andrew L. Jaffee

Iran is one of the world’s nations which implements Sharia, Islamic law: “At the devout end of the spectrum [is] the Islamic Republic of Iran, where mullahs are the ultimate authority…” This “Islamic Republic” is well-known for its “serious human [rights] violations.” One of Iran’s latest legal rulings demonstrates its government’s Stone Age attitude towards law:

A court in Iran has ruled that a man who blinded a woman with acid after she spurned his marriage proposals will also be blinded with acid. …

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There’s no question that this man should be punished for his crime, but it is the manner in which he is being castigated which sheds light onto the Iranian ruling mullahs’ mindset. What the mullahs consider as business-as-usual is something that most Westerners would consider barbaric. Iran’s history is replete with such uncivilized “legal practices:”

• Two boys were executed by hanging in 2005 for being gay.
• Nazanin Fatehi, an Iranian woman who killed a man who tried to rape her and her niece, was sentenced to death in 2006.
• In 2007, about 30 Iranians were hanged in public. According to the Guardian, this “spectacle” of repression and violence was held at a “location, near many office blocks and the Australian and Japanese embassies, [which] meant [the hangings] were seen by many middle-class Iranians who would not normally witness such events.”

These are but a few examples of Iran’s track-record of brutal repression of its own citizenry. A more general summation of the Islamic Republic’s crimes against humanity follows:

Amnesty International continues to document serious human violations including detention of human rights defenders and other prisoners of conscience, unfair trials, torture and mistreatment in detention, deaths in custody and the application of the death penalty. Iran has one of the highest number of recorded executions of any country in the world. Amnesty International is particularly concerned about the execution of children and individuals who were minors when their crimes were alleged to have taken place.

Amnesty International has reported extensively on a number of human rights abuses — including large-scale arrests, incommunicado detention and torture — have taken place in the context of recent unrest among the country’s Arab and Kurdish and Azeri ethnic minorities. Demonstrations held to protest violations have been met with indiscriminate use of violence; several of the victims have been children. Religious minority communities — including Bahais and Muslims practicing Sufism, have also been faced increased persecution in recent months. In recent months, the Iranian authorities have been carrying out a widespread crackdown on civil society, targeting academics, women’s rights activists, students, journalists and labor organizers. Hundreds of trade union activists–in particular activists from the Union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company were arrested as part of measures to prevent planned strikes. Lawyers, web loggers and others who have spoken out against human rights violations have themselves been targeted for abuse. …

Of course, Iran’s rulers are exempted from eye-for-an-eye punishment and persecution. They only dish out barbarism; they are immune from the law; they are the ones committing most of Iran’s crimes. If we are to continue the Biblical metaphor, and amend it slightly, we can aptly say that Iran’s mullahs practice the Golden Rule: those with all the gold make all the rules.

If you are interested in following news about Iran’s perverse leadership — and doing something about it — I suggest you first bookmark and read the website of the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI) and make a donation to assist them in their worthy cause of liberating Iran from its theocratic tyranny.

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Related: Dictator Watch, Extremists, Human Rights, Iran, Islam, Law

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