Reality tv in Iran
So those bastards in Iran were having a little joke. Ashtiani isn’t free at all.
Contrary to a vast publicity campaign by Western media that confessed murderer Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani has been released, a team of broadcast production team with the Iran-based Press TV has arranged with Iran’s judicial authorities to follow Ashtiani to her house to produce a visual recount of the crime at the murder scene.
Well that’s the right way to determine guilt: take a tv crew to someone’s house and force her to agree with you that she’s guilty guilty guilty.
Bastards bastards bastards.
Cynical bastards too! And cruel! And I thought Iran couldn’t get any lower in stature!
But you see, if it’s on TV then it has to be true, right?
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: Reality tv in Iran http://dlvr.it/B4VQ7 […]
Damn. There’s a reason I was pinching myself when the news appeared to be good.
Unbelievably cruel. It’s true psychological torture. I couldn’t despise them more.
I suppose those who are following this news are doing so partly because of Human Rights concern as articulated in the West and is demanded to be enforced by the public opinion ,but those who are in Iran,contrary your perception that you carry, majority of them I suppose do not agree with the Jurisprudence that you have developed in the West on the ground that the Western Jurisprudence did evolve on the basis of Judeo-Christian Ethics.My own contention that I argue with Shia in other aprts of Islamic World is simple:that Western Jurisprudence is what we have based on the social and political discourse that western world historically is engaged with the Abrahamic tradition and Islam is part of that and last “station” as argued by Islamic Jurisprudence.Your isolated objection to Iran’s legal system,rather say, the Idea of Justice and Enforcement is largely a derivative of western mainstream academic conviction not pronounced verbally or in written form to refute Islam as part of Abrahamic Legacy and the alst component known to human civilization adn Iran due to Geo-political reasons is identified as “challenger” to western doctrin of Legall system anf in direct opposition to western sphere of Influence.But things do not stop there-such position amke many western educated Shia who by and large accepted western life as better preference for its free flow of informatiom and citizenry’s right to articulate their own views,granted as argued by Chamsky, a result of Corporate Board Room Manipulation that defend the rich and powerful in the West are pushe to ambivalence on their “belief”system and may cause alienation of important segment of western population who are muslim and shia both.I just ask you to give a “read’ to my these sentences.Muhammad Zamiluddin Khan’92,HSPH,a.k.a. Zamil Khan
When you see the contempt they have for the basic rights of their own people, you get an inkling of how they’d treat everyone else if they could, for example if they had nuclear weapons. That is a selfish reason why human rights are indivisible.
Tne same issue crops up in the context of something I was reminded of recently, namely that in May 2001, Colin Powell announced a grant of 43 million USD to the Taliban for their help in the war on drugs, their human rights record being well-known. Now, this sort of announcement generally takes place months before anything actually changes hands, so perhaps there was no payment in the end. It must have given the terrorists a good laugh though, and it’s always nice to know that you’ve brightened somebody’s day.
This is about the grant to the Taliban: http://www.thenation.com/article/bushs-faustian-deal-taliban
As Press TV is a pure front for the Iranian regime, things look bad for Ms. Ashtiani, unfortunately. Let’s hope she’s released.
Mr. Muhammed Zamaluddin Khan. It’s not altogether clear what you want to say, but I think you want to hold that the difference between Iran’s “justice system” and those of the West is simply a cultural difference. Well, if it were only a cultural difference, there would be no need for the protests in Iran, nor would there be any need to imprison those who protest. The system of Sharia law that is in force in Iran is largely unjust and cruel, designed to maintain in power a regime that refuses to listen to its people. Indeed, I think Sharia law just is unjust and cruel. Even if the Iranian government did listen to its people, and had widespread popular support, if it tortures people until they confess, whips them until they confess, rapes them before they are executed, excutes people by stoning, imprisons people without warrant, and sentences them without due process, it is still not recognisably just. And so long as women continue to be treated as second class citizens, if citizens in any significant sense at all, even if the women are quite pleased to be treated that way — although I ask you to consider how likely this would be — the system is still unjust. This is not just about differences in culture. It’s about whether people in Iran can expect justice from their government, and, as things stand, that seems very unlikely. And that goes for any system that privileges some people over others. That doesn’t mean, of course, that Western justice systems couldn’t stand scrutiny and improvement. Of course they should be subject to the same conditions. But that doesn’t let Iran off the hook. So, Zami Khan, I have given a read to your sentences. Did I miss anything?
I just ask you to give a “read” to this sentence: Do you agree or disagree with throwing stones at a woman until she dies?
Now it’s back to being on tenterhooks all over again about the whole sordid scenaio. It just doesn’t bear thinking about. I was just about to pass on the good nerws – yeah, how cruel life is to some folk.
Ahhhhh yes, Abraham, they guy who thought murdering his son to please a barbaric god was a good idea…
… though Abraham is himself quite likely fictional (the reported details of his life are historically impossible)
Yeah, this blog is such a known promoter of Judeo-Christian ethics… wait, what?
Mr Khan, I think you’re giving “the West” too much credit. We have no monopoly on ideas of justice and equality. I have many Iranian friends who are passionate advocates of both.
“Judeo-Christian ethics” is an offensive term anyways. It implies that the Abrahamic tradition included one iota of worthwhile morality that hadn’t already been figured out centuries or even millennia prior in other parts of the world (and often in the very same part of the world).
The nice things that supposedly make up “Judeo-Christian ethics” — do unto others, don’t kill people (though the Bible’s far from consistent on this point), don’t steal shit, don’t lie, etc. — are universal to virtually every culture, and certainly universal to all successful cultures. When you strip out all the obvious stuff, you are left with a bunch of backwards oppressive dogma like “teh buttseks iz abdominal” and T-shirts that say “no fat menstruating chicks”.
So whenever anyone uses the phrase “Judeo-Christian ethics”, no matter how good their intentions, the effect is either a) to deny that other cultures are so inferior that they failed to figure out the most obvious moral principles for themselves, or b) to endorse the kind of misogynist homophobic theocratic megalomaniacal dogma that is synonymous with the most maligned forms of Shariah.
“Judeo-Christian ethics”? I don’t think so.
You know the fundagelical argument that the Western system of secular justice and human rights was actually invented by the Christians? Yeah, there’s a certain type of apologist for Islamism that accepts this argument wholeheartedly, and turns around to slam Western secular law as cultural/religious imperialism.
The practical upshot, as it always is with this kind of argument, is that if you speak out against a woman being killed with stones on the basis of medieval patriarchy, then you are somehow the prejudiced one.
Don’t forget the time leading up to this – all those confessions obtained under duress, etc. Don’t you just wish you were back in Salem in the late 17th century?
I think the west grew out of Greco-Roman culture, and not religious culture. Religion is a parasite on culture, and not a culture of itself. Islam is a parasite on various other cultures, such as persian culture or north african cultures, or asian cultures. Islam claims ownership on culture when it has absolute no right in doing so, and the same applies with Christianity or any other religion.
Agree with Egbert. Democracy (albeit of the slave owning kind), science, philosophy, etc existed in Greece long before Christianity.
And even if equal rights for women and homosexuals were Christian values – which they are not – defining Islam in opposition to this ‘Christianity’ is just peverse.
It’s not necessarily (self servingly) intentional, and my starting assumption in dialogue would be that it’s not. What we think, what we discern, by way of granularity of cultural nuances from our perspective inside the culture, is not necessarily accessible to those to whom our culture is alien to a greater or lesser degree. We need to take care that we understand what messages are actually available to those with whom we converse. No matter how unpalatable something may be to us, we need to argue it, not just on a basis of “our culture is [intrinsically, self evidently] better than yours”, which is no more than cultural imperialism, but demonstrate why and how.
Atheist, has someone argued on a basis of “our culture is [intrinsically, self evidently] better than yours”?
I doubt if people here would argue that Iran shouldn’t be able to have its own ways of doing things. It’s like everything else. You are free up to the point that what you do impinges on the rights of others.
The point is the consequence, namely of being put to death by a mob. If that is part of somebody’s “culture”, then I am happy to proclaim that our culture _is_ superior. “Is” doesn’t imply “ought to be”.
FWIW, Press TV’s UK correspondents include Yvonne Ridley (once kidnapped by the Taliban, and now a convert to the religion of peace) and former MP George Galloway. Indeed, Press TV was one of the subjects in the World Service’s recent documentary series “Useful Idiots”. One of its former journalists described how they interviewed him after he’d been locked up for suggesting that they cover the protests over the stolen election and the camera crew pretended that their subject wasn’t in prison. (Up until that election, it seems Press TV really did have some editorial independence.)
The World Service did a series on useful idiots?! I did not know this.
OB; yes, I thought the progs were interesting. The first prog (of two) is mostly about Stalin and interviews Doris Lessing, who describes herself as having been one (a useful idiot), and the stuff about Press TV is in the last part of the second. The MP3s are available from here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2010/07/100624_doc_useful_idiots_lenin.shtml
I was disappointed to hear Tony Benn (veteran UK politician) defending Mao’s record in the second prog.