A letter about Stoning to Death
A few weeks ago my mother,
Mehrangiz Kar, wrote an article about stoning to death in
Iran. She received many different feedbacks for her article
that was published in Farsi. Among those responses we found an
astonishing letter from an anonymous person whose mother was
stoned to death twenty six years ago. Since the strength of
the words of this letter paralyzed my body and mind for a few
minutes, I decided to quickly translate the text.
According to Article 83 of the Islamic Penal Code of Iran,
stoning to death has been declared a permissible punishment
for a few different types of adultery.
Hello.
I read your recent article about stoning to death.
Reading your article reminded me of the bleeding bruises in my
heart once again.
You wrote about murdering by stoning?
Have you ever held a bloody tool in your hands with which they
have murdered your mother?
Have you ever touched the bloody skin and hair of your mother
who has just been killed in a deep hole?
Have you ever followed the line of your mother’s blood in
order to find her corpse thrown at the back of a truck?
Have you ever seen the fresh grave of that dearest being with
a small piece of paper on which they have written her name
wrapped around a small branch of tree?
Has anyone ever said a word about the children of the people
who have been stoned to death?
I was fourteen and now I am forty.
To quote psychologists, I am one of the most fortunate people
on this planet. I am fortunate, because despite this contempt
in my life I have been able to continue my higher education
and find myself a wife, children and a credible job without
letting a single black spot remain in my life.
Do you even understand what it means to be the child of a
person who has been shamefully stoned to death?
If Islamic clerics tell you that you could not win over the
Islamic laws, they have, indeed told you the truth.
My mother used to tell me that she had become a sex-worker in
order to feed us and to support us. She used to command us in
being real men. She used to tell us to stand on our own feet
and to never lose our hope in Ali (the first imam in shiasm).
Seriously who would want to sell her body, to sell her sex to
anonymous men except for those women who have no other way of
feeding their children?
If the husband knows how to make money, the wife and the
mother of the family does not have to go and seek customers.
The economic situation needs to improve and single mothers or
those mothers whose husbands do not have the ability or the
willpower to work, should be able to seek help from the
government.
You must establish an organization for supporting these women.
It does not have to be a very rich organization in the
beginning. No one has the right to condemn you for seeking
financial support from different sources for these types of
support organizations. Women like my mother who was eventually
stoned to death need your help. They need the world’s help and
support. Their forgotten families, too, need the world’s help.
Help them!
Executing people for having not immoral actions is not going
to have an effective result.
Tell me how many people have been executed and stoned to death
since the beginning of the Islamic Revolution in Iran…What is
the result of all of this violence other than the fact that
the evil is now truly dominating our society?
I never forget the last words of my mother’s Islamic judge:
“I issued a verdict for stoning this woman to death so that
other individuals learn a lesson from her doomed fate and to
avoid sins of such nature. To execute by shooting would not
have made her suffer enough!”
Alas. Twenty six years ago my mother was stoned to death
before my eyes. Has these women’s tragic fate helped our
society improve? Statistics show that the rates of
prostitution and corruption have increased exponentially.
God bless you!