Eye For An Eye Makes The World Blind
Muslims are stereotyped as most violent peoples in our time. They behead people, take lives of innocent victims without slightest remorse, and they wage war in the name of religion. It now appears, one Ameneh Bahrami has taken it upon herself to redeem the1.2 million strong followers of Islam.
As the inset of the picture suggests, in 2004, Ameneh Bahrami was only 27 years old, looking forward to a life with vim and vigor as a pretty woman of her age should. But her life changed overnight when Majid Movahedi poured acid over her, burning her face, scalp, and other parts of her body. She was blinded in both eyes.
Her offense? She refused the marriage proposal of her attacker.
On March 27, I had written, “Bangladesh has the highest incidence of acid throwing attacks in the world. Victims are generally women, overwhelmingly, young girls in their teens, attacked by jilted males whose advances are rejected by the innocent girls. The effect on the victims are life shattering, especially, when it happens to poor girls in the villages, their lives are literally stolen from them.”
It is apparent that acid attack is not limited to Bangladesh, it happens in other third world countries such as Iran as well; the difference is that they have very strict laws against it. Under the enforcement of Islamic law, an offender is given the legal right to reach a settlement with victims or their families, however, if no agreement is reached, then the retribution is “eye-for-an-eye,” which is endorsed by Quran, and the Old Testament as well.
Known as 'qisas,' the penal code of Iran, which follows harsh Quranic laws that metes medieval punishments to perpetrators, where convicted murderers are usually sentenced to death. As recent as in October 2010, a convicted thief had his hand amputated in front of other prisoners. In the trial of Bahrami's attacker, the court ruled that she would be allowed to have a doctor pour a few drops of acid in one of Majid Movahedi's eyes.
When Bahrami heard of this news in November 2008, she was in Spain for treatment. In an interview with a local radio station, she said that she was happy with the sentence. Later, in a March 2009 interview, she clarified, “I am not doing this out of revenge, but rather so that the suffering I went through is not repeated.”
Continued on the next page
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