A little harsh, don’t you think?
TEHRAN (AFP) — An Iranian man who was sentenced to death by stoning after he was found guilty of having illicit relations with a teenage girl has been hanged, a newspaper reported on Saturday.
Abdullah Fareivar, a 50-year-old music teacher, was hanged on Thursday in a prison in the northern town of Sari, the Etemad Melli newspaper said.
It said Fareivar was sentenced to death despite his family saying his relations with the 17-year-old girl were not illicit as he had entered into a contract marriage with her and that his first wife was aware of it.
Under Iran’s Islamic law, adultery is still punishable by stoning, which involves the public hurling of stones at a partially buried convict. A man is buried up to his waist and a woman up to her shoulders.
(Read full AFP report here)
Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia, marriage officials are capitulating to calls for child marriage ‘reform‘:
Marriage officials in Saudi Arabia have refused to marry three 13-year-old girls, amid an outcry by rights activists in the kingdom over child marriages, Al-Watan newspaper reported on Saturday.
Last week marriage officials told the parents of three girls that they were too young, citing a recent instruction by the head of the Dammam regional courts, Sheikh Abdulrahman al-Raqib, Watan reported.
When the father of one then sought permission from Raqib, he was told to wait until she was 15.
Saudi Arabia has no law setting a minimum age for marriage for either gender, leading to occasional cases in which girls are married off by their parents before reaching their teens, some even younger than age 10.
Saudi human rights activists have sought to have a law banning the practice of child marriage and setting a minimum age of 18, but some powerful religious officials have resisted.In January, the grand mufti, Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, said girls as young as 10 may be married according to Islam and stressed that Islamic law is not by any means oppressive to women as he lashed out at critics.
“If a girl exceeds ten or twelve then she is eligible for marriage, and whoever thinks she is too young, then he or she is wrong and has done her an injustice,” he said.
Because if a girl isn’t ready at age 13, then of course she’ll be ready at age 15!
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I don’t get it….if he was sentenced to “death by stoning” then why was he HANGED?! they took ALL the fun out of it!
Hi
I have been reading your blog a lot recently, I like it and just placed it on my blog roll so thought I better introduce myself. I regularly do similar stuff as you. I am not Jewish but have a great interests in all things Jewish. Good article, just want to say it is my understanding that Saudi Arabia is a far worse offender in this area than Iran. In Iran at least their is massive opposition at a political and civil level to this type of state murder.
You may be interested in this little anecdote
http://gubu-world.blogspot.com/2009/02/god-bless-israel.html
Ted from Ireland
Thanks for sharing. Your blog is very interesting I’ll put it on my blog roll too! That story is pretty nutty, and it reinforces what I’ve learned about Iran by talking to many Iranians. Officially everything is illegal, but in reality and behind closed doors, the people do whatever they want and are very western-like. But that’s what baffles me. Why don’t they stand up to their disgusting administration? It looks like you spend some time there, any ideas?
Thanks Mikecg
I agree with you. Churchill said the Soviet Union was “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”, he should have said it about Iran. Iranian people are so interesting and are by far the best Muslims at assimilating into European and North American societies. I spent about three weeks there and I can tell you its not just the Iranians living in the west that are progressive and modern thinking. The young people (men and women) were politically vibrant and fun to be with. I was even invited to a secret party where I was told there would be booze and even a chance of a bit of romance but it got called off at the last minute for security reasons.
Like you I just cannot figure out why they have not tossed the Mullahs into the Gulf. Perhaps they are blinded by nationalism or the regime have a tighter grip than we realise. Its worth noting that all prominent personalities in the regime came to power themselves in a revolution so they understand popular revolt, and how to prevent it. I have some optimism that Obama’s approach of engagement might work. Iranians crave respect (the great Persian civilisation and all that) and even its dissidents dislike seeing their country treated like a banana republic by the west. So perhaps Obama might be more successful at triggering change in Iran than Bush was. Here’s hoping.