Shadows of the Devils in Shrouds

By Nicole Sadighi

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.