Stoning is an Act of Barbarism [incl. Tariq Ramadan]

I have witnessed the unimaginably gruesome video images of public stonings carried out by enthusiastic mobs in the name of Islamic law with both sadness and revulsion.

The execution of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who was sentenced to this barbaric punishment by an Iranian Islamic court, threatened to add another such image in the name of religion. Though the Iranian government on Wednesday announced its suspension of the stoning, this sentence and the abhorrent legal status of women in the Iranian Islamic judicial process still remains.

The “suspension” of Sakineh’s sentence then is of little comfort to the other women who presently face this same sentence To stand by and allow this violent oppression of women to continue is tantamount to conceding the values we hold sacred that protect the dignity and rights of all human beings regardless of their ethnic background, gender, or faith.

A short description of the “judicial process” that has led Sakineh to this point, and of the torturous death she would have faced, and that others still do, as a result, should inspire our indignation and outrage more than any reasoned argument I can marshal here. The charge against her was adultery and, confronted by the options of stoning or flogging, she confessed her “crime” in a court which can only be presided over by men.

It is a forum where the testimony of women has no legal capacity. She was convicted and received a disfiguring and agonizing 99 lashes in front of her two children. In another proceeding a male judge sentenced her to death by exercising “judicial knowledge,” a prerogative which allows the judge to convict on the basis of personal feelings regardless of any actual evidence. She would have been buried up to her neck (a similar conviction of a man would result in burial up to the waist) and killed by being pelted with stones whose size is prescribed to avert immediate death and protract the physical torment and humiliation that are requisite elements of the process. No more nightmarish a scene can be imagined than the one described in Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner, of just such an execution by the Taliban at a soccer stadium in front of thousands of eager “fans”. An arena where a celebration of life and joy regularly takes place, as the recent World Cup demonstrated, was transformed into a locus of death and terror. The process and the sentence violate fundamental norms of international law as well as objective standards of justice and human decency. “Suspending” Sakineh’s stoning, while preserving the distinct possibility of a public execution in some other manner, is a cynical gesture of a government under pressure, and does nothing to alleviate the draconian system of religious law that applies to half the population of Iran.

All the trite apologetics that one hears in response to offensive conduct in the name of religion simply bear no credibility in this instance. This is not an isolated act of a few extremists who have misinterpreted the tenets of Islam. Quite the contrary. Such a blatant display of inhumanity is a function of legislation enacted by a national regime and enforced by a governmentally sanctioned court of law whose judges are empowered to interpret officially legislated religious law. It is neither an aberration nor a corruption of Islam but in fact is the official expression of Islam in a republic of close to 80 million people. This is precisely what renders it an evil that liberal democratic societies cannot afford to tolerate or ignore.

The endorsement or relative silence that emanates from the community that should be most critical of such “misinterpretations”, if they are in fact considered as such, is inexcusable. Even those heralded as the voices of reason and moderation often simply mask either an implicit endorsement of such perverse religious law or lack the courage to criticize it.

A few years ago Tariq Ramadan, a celebrated Muslim intellectual and Oxford professor of Islamic thought, articulated a sentiment that holds little promise of any internal constructive dissent if he indeed represents the voice of liberal and progressive Islam. When challenged by Nicolas Sarkozy to reject the Sharia penalty of stoning women for adultery, Ramadan, rather than categorically dissociating himself from it, (and from his brother, a prominent exponent of the radical Muslim Brotherhood who shamelessly endorses stoning) shockingly called for a moratorium on the issue. As if one needs a governmental or judicial inquiry into the merits of denying women equality before the law and subjecting them to a degrading and excruciating death.

Barbarism in the name of religion remains exactly that — barbarism. It is actually far more sinister than deviant acts of barbarism because it is normalized by law, sanctioned by governments, ideologically reinforced by theologians, and sadly, apparently supported by sizeable segments of the population.

I can find no substantive distinction between a law in the name of religion that disenfranchises, dehumanizes, and oppresses women, and the Nuremberg laws which did the same to Jews in Nazi Germany. An injustice is one no matter its source and should be vigorously denounced. Had the ancient Israelites been as timid, or tolerant, or politically correct when it came to religion we would still have child sacrifice practised today. It was not considered conduct warranting respect out of religious pluralism but one that demanded eradication as an intolerable evil regardless of the supreme religious dedication it obviously entailed. The stoning of women is no different.

If we were to resort to a biblical model for the treatment of women, my preference would be that recounted in chapter one of Genesis, a far less familiar narrative than that in chapters two and three which has woman fashioned out of man’s rib and condemned to a life of servitude to him. Chapter one in fact presents an opposing creation story where man and woman are created together in a kind of bigendered being — " God created Adam in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” In fact the plain sense of this verse is that the combination of male and female is precisely what constitutes the image of God mentioned in the first half of the verse. “Adam” here is clearly not a man but, more properly translated as “humankind.”

It is tragic that Iran, and other states governed by religious law, have chosen to ignore this account in favour of the one that follows.

I therefore call on our governments in the West to protest this evil in no uncertain terms. Iran is infamous for its dissimulation and Sakineh remains vulnerable to the arbitrary whims of this repressively religious regime that recognizes no rule of law. She, and any woman who confronts the same “religious” process, should be granted citizenship by all our democracies which would make it clear to the Islamic Republic of Iran that any stone hurled at them is one aimed at us and our sense of justice that affords all our citizens equal access to and equal treatment before the law. There can be no “moratorium” in the face of patent evil.

James Diamond is the Joseph and Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo.

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