Eye for an Eye
[Photo: RedEye by lokiv7]Everyday when I wake up in the morning, I flip through whatever little nuggets of news someone(?) in the world chooses to make available to my cellphone to read. Nothing earthshattering, but on occasion, there's articles like this one that get me thinking; thought I'd share this one today:
MADRID (AP) — An Iranian woman [Bahrami] living in Spain said Wednesday she welcomed a Tehran court ruling that awards her eye-for-an-eye justice against a suitor who blinded her with acid.
[...]
Late last year an Iranian court ruled that the man — identified only as Majid — who blinded Bahrami in 2004 after she spurned him, should also be blinded with acid based on the Islamic law system of "qisas," or eye-for-an-eye retribution, according to Iranian newspaper reports from November.
Just this idea alone raises questions for me over what justice truly is, and whether punishments like this are for simple revenge, or if they are truly preventing future repeats of the same crime. If someone steals my car, are things really square if I'm allowed to go steal theirs? Does 'eye for an eye' really work any better than our current system of fines/jailtime does now? One person is already blind, does it really square things if we purposely blind someone else?
Anyway, all that aside, there's more to this story, because..
Bahrami [...] said Wednesday that under Iranian law, she is entitled to blind him in only one eye, [...] because in Iran women are not considered equal to men.
"They have told us that my two eyes are equal to one of his because in my country each man is worth two women. [Men and women] are not the same,"
Now, I was already struggling to find actual justice in the punishment, and now I can't even find justice in the justice! If I steal a woman's car, is she only entitled to steal half of my car in return? Only entitled to steal it on every even day of the month?
The whole reason her blindness is so bad, is that she can't see .. anything! Where is the justice in him only losing a portion of his sight? (though, where is the justice in him being blind as well ... neither brings her sight back, so what's the point?)
So, .. go. What's the point? :)
