They Hang Women, Don't They?

Is there any sight more despicably hypocritical than a left-liberal paying obeisance to Islamo-fascism and betraying Western liberal values as a result?

Consider this extract from a letter that 87 faculty members at Brandeis University sent to president Frederick Lawrence, successfully imploring him to overturn the university's commitment to honour one of the most courageous female public figures in the world?

"Please know that, like Ms. Hirsi Ali, we fully recognize the harm of forced marriages; of female genital cutting, which can cause, among other public health problems, increased maternal and infant mortality; and of honor killings. These phenomena are not, however, exclusive to Islam.

The selection of Ms. Hirsi Ali further suggests to the public that violence toward girls and women is particular to Islam or the Two-Thirds World, thereby obscuring such violence in our midst among non-Muslims, including on our own campus.... We cannot accept Ms. Hirsi Ali's triumphalist narrative of western civilization, rooted in a core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples."

Note, if you will, the neglect in the first quoted sentence to acknowledge the fact that female genital mutilation is a crime against the person of the female herself: note the fact that the signatories, to their shame, consider only the effects of the practice on "public health" in the form of its possible deleterious effects on the mutilated female in childbirth, and upon her infant.

It is almost as if the signatories do not consider a female at risk of that barbaric Third World procedure an individual in her own right, as if by some strange osmosis they are projecting primitive misogynistic Third World attitudes towards women onto the females of such "cultures".

Note, too, the dismissive attitude to "honor" killings (yes, inverted commas around that word "honor" should be de rigueur in all politically correct circles, since malecentric femicide is what these killings represent, based on the concept of women as infantile and inferior chattels of their male relatives.

Ah, but what is that document if not an example of the cultural relativist's sophistry, an insistence that all cultures are as good, or perhaps I should say as bad, as each other? 

In my previous post I mentioned, inter alia, the plight of an Iranian woman who is due to be hanged in that hellhole for the female of the species (see this article on the execution of Iranian women), and now comes word that another women is in danger of the Iranian noose:

'Roya Nobakht, 47, presently being detained as a political prisoner in Iran, may face execution for insulting Islam. She has lived in Stockport, England with her husband for the last six years and holds dual British-Iranian citizenship.

Her husband, Daryoush Taghipoor, has stated that his wife was arrested while visiting a friend at Iran's Shiraz airport last October for comments she had made on a Facebook group calling the government of Iran "too Islamic." According to a copy of her charge sheet seen by the UK's Independent [newspaper]; she was transferred to Tehran and charged with "gathering and participation with intent to commit crimes against national security and insulting Islamic sanctities"-- crimes punishable by death.

In an interview, Mr. Taghipoor told the Manchester Evening News that "his wife is not well at all...she has lost three stones [42 lbs]… and is scared that the government will kill her." He also said that a confession had been extracted from his wife "under duress." As is well documented, torture is systematically used by Iranian authorities to obtain confessions from political dissidents and even from some common prisoners....'

 The report continues:

'Ms. Nobakht's fears are not unfounded. Iran's persecution of expatriates is nothing new. The first known case was that of Ms. Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist who died under torture in 2003 while in custody. Ms. Zahara Bahrami, a Dutch-Iranian, was hanged in 2011....

 Ms Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist who had left Iran in 1974, returned in 2003 to cover a story about Iran. She was soon arrested and detained in Evin prison on charges of espionage. As Iran does not recognize dual citizenships, Ms. Kazemi was not allowed representation by Canadian authorities. She later died in custody. The Iranian officials claimed she had died as a result of a stroke but refused to return her body to Canada. In 2005, however, Dr. Shahram Azam, a doctor with the Iranian security forces who had examined Ms. Kazemi's half-dead body, fled Iran. He testified that the victim's body showed extensive signs of torture administered over a few days. The notes from his medical journal include a crushed toe, broken fingers, missing finger nails, broken ribs, a skull fracture, severe abdominal bruising, marks of flogging on her back and feet, extensive damage to the genitals and peculiar deep scratches on her neck. She was 52 years old and the first victim of the Islamic regime's war of terror on Iranians holding dual citizenship.... '

 Read more here

The last woman to be hanged in Britain went to the gallows in 1956; she was a criminal's moll and had been involved in a murder.  Her name was Ruth Ellis, and the left-liberals of the day were up in arms; their campaign against capital punishment, spearheaded by the Labour MP Sydney Silverman, succeeded in 1965.

I wonder how many of the left-liberal brigade will be up in arms over the fate that in all likelihood  awaits Roya Nobakht.

In the United States opponents of the death penalty (abolished in some states, but not in others) like to say that it is "cruel and unusual punishment".

What, I wonder, do the Brandeis University cultural relativists who signed that despicable faculty letter make of Iran's penchant for sending people to the gallows, including women?

Will they, and others of their ilk, consider it "cruel and unusual punishment"?

Or, seeing as it's based on Islamic injustice justice, will they merely shrug and say:

"We cannot accept [a]triumphalist narrative of western civilization, rooted in a core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples"