Retribution decreed by God

It was distressing news that I read in a daily widely circulated in the middle east..

A woman, in Iran was put to death early yesterday dawn. She was convicted of stabbing to death the wife of her lover. She confessed ,or rather admitted guilty and was sentenced.

The irony is that having a paramour or a contract relationship outside wedlock per se is legal for men in that country that swears by Islamic laws. 

The poor woman was consigned to the gallows by the brother of the woman she killed. A divinely decreed act of principle and justice,” an eye for an eye”! Furthermore her lover (contractual lover) too was witness to the execution.

The hapless woman prayed before she was taken to the gallows, and later became frenzied and wailed, pleading for her life. The brother of the woman she killed aided the noose and he pushed the slide that dropped her down into the gallows and strangulating.

Quite graphic and gory!

I wonder, why, why, the original wife did not exercise similar assault on the paramour,.  Either way,  the practise and the legal approval given to men is lawful denigration of women and her status!

It reminds me of the sensational story that was around in the 1970’s, and the movie that was circulated clandestinely, “The death of a Princess”. The incident purportedly took place in the Whabian obscurantist Saudi Arabia, where a princess in her late teens was decapitated in public for her liaison with another man. The matter was hushed though, as the Saudis could exercise the power of oil over the world outside.

An archaic and tribal law- principle that is still being followed! "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. And then you swear by God. If God as people claim and state, is love and compassion the very dictum of “eye for an eye” is antediluvian and wrong. And I strongly feel that if any faith claims to hold this dictum as inviolable and as decreed by any god or messenger, then it tantamount to not a faith of compassion, forgiveness and peace, but it represents cannibalism and is barbaric.

The system of retributive justice or retaliation is one of the laws from the Torah and the ancient Jewish traditions, later picked up into Islamic coded laws.

“The origins of the retributive justice may have come about in the ancient times, and it developed as early civilizations grew and a less well-established system for retribution of wrongs, feuds and vendettas, threatened the social fabric”. But is it relevant today?

Laws that were coded in ancient times were perhaps done in relation to the social context of the times, as it is also done today. For instance it is noted in many writings on history that after the Crusades, women out numbered men by large numbers. Men in thousands were killed in the frenzy of the holy crusades. Law was then encoded so that a man could take more than one wife. This was one way meant to bring women under male protection, because the man- woman population ratio was adverse to men. And security of women folk was highly threatened. But the male hegemony over the society of certain faiths found the law quite suited to their malevolent designs and carnal pleasure. Women were regarded as an instrument for carnal use and serfdom. The law was suitable to subjugate the female sex, and is followed as Gods law. Does it commensurate with the values and ethos of societies? And giving it the sanctity of faith is belittling the faith and blasphemous

The poor women!