Practical Sharia -- XI: Causing state of arousal.

Sometimes one thinks that there is a finite limit on viciousness and ignorance but it exists in limitless supply like hydrogen in the universe, with some new cloud constantly being discovered by the astronomers.

Remember, this is the way that sharia is ACTUALLY applied in specific cases, this time in Iran.

The entries are as haunting as they are chilling. There is Atefeh Rajabi, a 16-year-old girl whose case became an international cause célèbre in 2004 when she was hanged for "acts incompatible with chastity" after she was raped and then refused to remain quiet about the attack.

Or a young girl in Teheran, "arrested for swimming in her home pool in a bathing suit, she was found guilty of causing 'a state of sexual arousal' in a neighbour from whose house she could be seen". She was sentenced to 60 lashes in April 1981, but died after the 30th.

The entries referred to are in a data base maintained by the daughters of an Iranian man who was assassinated by an Iranian death squad.

Here is a data base of more individual cases of unimaginable abuse under the mullahs in Iran: Omid, a memorial in defense of human rights -- Link

What meaning could the term "civilized" have if it encompasses, even in some minute particular, a regime such as that which has been in power in Iran since the fall of the Shah?

"Sisters publish list of 9,400 Iranians 'murdered' by the regime" By Philip Sherwell, News.telegraph, 1/22/06 <-- Clarity & Resolve and Francis Fukuyama, Wall Street Journal,1/20/06, p. A14.