Morning Star

Urgent action needed (UPDATED)

Newest UPDATE: Our dear sister was hanged at dawn , Saturday. No reprieve for the extenuating circumstances, or for the world's condemnation of the handling of the case -- proving the ineffectual nature of "hashtag diplomacy." May she rest in peace. 

NEWS UPDATE: The execution has been postponed, probably due to increased global attention, not to mention your fervent prayers. While this case smacks of injustice and cruelty, it is only one of many, and this prisoner is surrounded by countless others who are suffering deeply. Kindly remember them all in your prayers and conversations, so that the balm of justice and comfort may soon come their way.

 

 Reyhaneh Jabbari may be executed as early as tomorrow for killing a man in 2007. She was taken to a building by a man who posed as a potential interior design client, and there he attempted to rape her. Finally, she grabbed a knife from the kitchen and stabbed him. The man, who worked for the Iranian intelligence agency, died in hospital days later. She was arrested shortly thereafter:

As soon as I arrived at the Police Headquarters three large men were waiting for me in a small room. As soon as I entered, they handcuffed me to a chair and made me sit on the floor... They took turns screaming, "You think you are smart? People more important than you have been broken here. You insect, who do you think you are? Answer every question loudly...

I could feel something on my back and my skin swelling getting ripped. I felt a burning sensation and screamed until my ears hurt from the sound of my own screams. I did not hear the lash of the whip. I do not know if they were beating me with a whip, a rope or a piece of wood. I never learned what those three monsters were burning me with. I could only hear myself screaming. With my hands tied higher than my body to the chair, the pain and burning made my arms numb...

Winter was cold this year; it coincided with the prison's heating system breaking down. In our ward, all you could hear was chattering teeth, coughing, sneezing.... The chattering teeth reminded me of 2007, when I was 19, in solitary confinement, with wounds all over my body, and shaking from anxiety and fear ... I was questioned mostly by two men whose names I never found out. They would dictate [my confession] and I would write. Once they took me somewhere for interrogation where I saw a 14 or 15 year old girl hanging from the ceiling from her wrists. The girl was pale, her lips were cracked. She was whimpering.

[In another room,] the interrogator sat across from me and said that today or tomorrow they would go get my little sister... He referred to her by name: Badook. "It is her turn," he said. "She is frail, thin ... How long do you think she will last hanging like that one?" He began telling me in detail what he was going to do in front of me to my little sister ... I started crying and begged him not to do such a thing. He said he had no alternative. I asked him what I could do to stop him from hurting my sister. He said: "It is very simple. Just confess that you bought the knife before the murder". ... So I wrote that I had bought the knife beforehand, signed the paper and breathed a sigh of relief.

Interestingly, there is no such thing as a self-defense plea under these circumstances, so she has been charged with first-degree murder. Her files have gone missing (which included lab evidence of a drink he had prepared for her laced with sedatives) and of course the "confession" was coerced after torture and threats against her family.

There is a petition to save her from the death penalty here. And prayes for all those enduring horrific conditions in Iranian jails. God grant them justice and consolation.

UPDATE: a sympathetic guard lent her a phone for a farewall call to her mother.

“I am currently handcuffed and there is a car waiting outside to take me for the execution of the sentence,” Jabbari told her mother, whose recounting in Farsi was translated by FoxNews.com. “Goodbye, dear Mum. All of my pains will finish early tomorrow morning. I’m sorry I cannot lessen your pain. Be patient. We believe in life after death. I’ll see you in the next world and I will never leave you again because being separated from you is the most difficult thing to do in the world.”

The distraught mother wrote that she called the prison to ask what she could do and was told to come Tuesday to collect her daughter’s body.

I know you will pray.

ADDENDUM: The mother's anguish described here.

Laws don't safeguard girls in Iran

Iran, like many Islamic countries, allows for its citizens to follow the example of Muhammed, which means that daughters can be offered in marriage while quite young:

To the dismay of rights campaigners, girls in the Islamic republic can marry as young as 13 provided they have the permission of their father. Boys can marry after the age of 15.

In Iran, a girl under the age of 13 can still marry, but needs the permission of a judge. At present, however, marrying stepchildren is forbidden under any circumstances.

As many as 42,000 children aged between 10 and 14 were married in 2010, according to the Iranian news website Tabnak. At least 75 children under the age of 10 were wed in Tehran alone.

As bad as that is, a new twist has been legalised:

Parliamentarians in Iran have passed a bill to protect the rights of children which includes a clause that allows a man to marry his adopted daughter and while she is as young as 13 years.

Activists have expressed alarm that the bill, approved by parliament on Sunday, opens the door for the caretaker of a family to marry his or her adopted child if a court rules it is in the interests of the individual child.

It certainly shows two entirely different views: one group of rights campaigners trying to raise the age of consent for marriage, while another group argues for underaged marriage in the name of children's rights. Bizarre. 

But it must be understood that Muslim women widely defend the practice of both child marriage and polygamy as being in their best interest because a man is their only protection. Females pass from the care of their fathers to their husbands, and brothers or sons when necessary. The defense begins with the accolades given to Muhammed and his followers for marrying unattached women (or taking them as concubines) after killing their menfolk. It was seen as charity then, and nothing has changed in the interim. A married woman has food and board, a safe place to live, and protection from predators in the outside world. 

The Christian view is entirely different. A marriage is an eschatological sign of Christ's love for his bride, the Church. The vows are freely undertaken by mature person with the intention of creating families and cleaving exclusively to one another til death. When Christians see vulnerable women and children, they build orphanages, foster homes, convents, and schools.

Muslims, on the other hand, find them husbands.

The benefit of integrated classrooms

There is this account of strict gender-separation:

Mohabat News -- In line with its policy of introducing gender-segregation to every social enviromement, the Iranian government has banned men and women from using educational facilities at the same time. Men will be permitted access on some days and women on others. The directive applis in particular to libraries and research institutes.

According to Shahrzad News, based on a report by Fars news agency, non-governmental schools head Fereshte Heshmatian confirmed that the decision had been made at the 67th meeting of the Council for Monitoring Non-Governmental Schools, in keeping with the policy of promoting citizens' involvement in administering education. "A directive has been sent to all provincial education authorities, stressing that members of the opposite sex must not even face one another in such environments ."

I covered this in my first book, highlighting how gender separation impacts the pursuit of truth:

[M]ale-female differences had very important effects on the history of educational institutions in the life of the Church. After the fall of the Roman Empire, monasticism was the quiet force that restored order to Europe. One element that grew from this was a system of education built on monastic and later cathedral schools, which evolved slowly into a very structured way of passing along a sophisticated body of knowledge. Young boys who showed academic promise were sent to the monks to be educated, and girls whose families had the money and the inclination sent them to convents to be taught. For centuries, the Church was guardian and dispenser of the only education available, and it integrated a variety of disciplines—rudimentary science, rhetoric, logic, and elementary math—with a Christian world view. In a simple and straightforward way, contemplative reflection was combined with intellectual inquiry, giving students a well-rounded education.

As the Middle Ages progressed, the academic disciplines became more sophisticated and the teachers formed guilds—just as other workers of the age did. There was great pride in one’s profession, and teachers were just as inclined to show marks of distinction and to look out for one another in a Christian and brotherly way. Cathedral schools competed for honors, fought for the better students, and evolved into the universities that we recognize even until today. There should be a great sense of satisfaction in the part that the Church played in seeking out knowledge of the world and making education available to a widespread portion of the population.

Two rifts grew in the universities that would prove to have great negative consequences on the integrated knowledge that had served the Church and the world so well. There was eventually a split in academia between theology and philosophy, which ultimately mandated that students choose between one and the other as a primary discipline. This breach was so pronounced that by the end of the thirteenth century, the University of Paris mandated that theological topics not be even discussed by those who taught philosophy.¹ Clearly, the integration that had served education so well was being overcome by compartmentalization, as the universities drifted from their contemplative roots.

The second rift happened at roughly the same time when women were finally refused access to the universities. This was not so much an objective indictment of women as students but a shift in the way that men saw the academy. True to the spirit of the age, the guilds had evolved into chivalric outposts and the ecclesial ranks reflected the orders of the knights that fought for truth and order in the secular world. Thus, the universities barred those students and masters who were not a part of the clergy.

Concretely, then, by the end of the thirteenth century, both the feminine presence within the student body was gone from academia and the spiritual motherhood of the Church was severely constrained. The effect was twofold and wholly negative in the long run. Primarily, women, who had built many of their abbeys into powerful learning establishments, no longer had access to the best formation. At that time, Hildegard of Bingen, a Benedictine abbess, was the most renowned female academic and her fields of expertise were many. There were other women as well—a long and impressive list—who worked side by side with men in the scriptoria reproducing religious texts, were enrolled in the universities, and wrote treatises on a wealth of subjects. This collaboration now—school by school—came to a crashing halt.

The second effect was more subtle but every bit as harmful to the field of learning. Not only did women no longer have the benefit of the best of education, but the schools no longer benefited by the presence of women and their integrated way of thinking. What women brought to academia then—and still do—is “the living experience of the truths of faith,”¹ What followed, sadly, over the years, was a disintegration on many levels...

1 See Francis Martin, The Feminist Question, p. 49

1 Martin, p. 49

[from The Authentic Catholic Woman, Chapter 6, "The Church as Teacher"]

Deeply unfortunate

Child marriages, always sanctioned under Islam, are increasing in Iran:

Farshid Yazdani, a member of the Association for the Defense of Children’s Rights, has raised the flag on the increasing rate of the marriage of girls under the age of 10 in Iran.  He stated that in 2009, 449 girls under the age of 10 were married off. The number increased to 716 cases in 2011.

Yazdani added that the number of marriages for girls under 15 years of age has increased from 33,383 in 2006 to 35,931 in 2007, 37,996 in 2008, and 43,459 last year (please note that the dates are approximate as the statistics were given according to the Iranian calendar, which begins at the start of the Persian New Year).

According to Yazdani, the rate of marriages of girls under the age of 15 has had a 45% increase compared to marriages in other age brackets. He added that these figures are based on the statistics released by Iran’s Civil Registrations Office, and they should set off alarms for social activists and policy makers.

Article 1041 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran states that girls can be engaged before the age of nine, and married at nine: "Marriage before puberty (nine full lunar years for girls) is prohibited. Marriage contracted before reaching puberty with the permission of the guardian is valid provided that the interests of the ward are duly observed."

Of course, Muhammed set the example with his marriage to the child, Aisha. Devout Muslims use him as the example in all things, no matter what natural law, human psychology, or other external indicators might suggest.

"There is no compulsion..."

Prayers for our sisters, Sofia and Leila, who are suffering grievously for their Christian faith. First, from Somalia:

A Somali convert from Islam was paraded before a cheering crowd last month and publicly flogged as a punishment for embracing a “foreign religion,” sources said.
 
Sofia Osman, a 28-year-old Christian from Janale city in Somali’as Lower Shabelle region, had been taken into custody by Islamic extremist al Shabaab militants in November; the public whipping was meant to mark her release. She received 40 lashes on Dec. 22 while jeered by spectators.

“Osman was whipped 40 lashes at 3 p.m., but she didn’t tell what other humiliations she had suffered while in the hands of the militants,” an eyewitness, told Compass, adding that whipping left her bleeding. “I saw her faint. I thought she had died, but soon she regained consciousness and her family took her away.”

and then from Iran:

Leila Mohammadi, was arrested after a number of security agents raided her home on 30 July, 2011 at 10:30 P.M. in Kianshahr town, east of Tehran. The agents thoroughly searched her house and also confiscated some of her belongings.

Ms. Mohammadi was taken to Horr custody center which belongs to the Iranian police forces. From there, she was transferred to Evin prison. On December 28, 2011, she was released on a bail of $150,000 USD after 74 days in harsh conditions in solitary confinement in Evin prison.

Unfortunately, I don't think that five months counts towards the two years, and there is no telling what abuse was already suffered during that time--usually in an effort to break the will and have the person renounce Christ (such procedures are part of shari'a law).