The Human Condition

Court orders Iranian man blinded

“A court in Iran has ruled that a man who blinded a woman with acid after she spurned his marriage proposals will also be blinded with acid.

“The ruling was reported in Iranian newspapers on Thursday.

“The punishment is legal under the Islamic Sharia code of qias or equivalence, which allows retribution for violent crimes.”

And this, from the UK Guardian:

“Testifying in Movahedi's presence, she told the court that she wanted ‘to inflict the same life on him that he inflicted on me’. Asked by the judge if she wanted Movahedi's face to be splashed with acid, she replied: ‘That is impossible and horrific. Just drip 20 drops of acid in his eyes so he can realise what pain I am undergoing.’"

Mahatma Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye, and soon the world is blind.” And as my mother used to say, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” But I can’t convince myself that our non-Islamic way of handling a situation like this is unambiguously and without question to be preferred. We would just let him languish a long long time in a cage of our devising, with eyes and face intact. What his eyes come to see will probably not often be worth seeing, from our perspective. But from hers? Don’t splash his face with acid, she says. Twenty drops will do just fine.