The Stoning of Soraya M

In our country and many western countries we have laws against cruelty to humans and animals. If you saw someone beating an animal to death you would not only be distressed and horrified but you would most certainly alert the authorities to act against the perpetrator. In some countries, namely Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabi, Nigeria, Sudan, Iraq and Egypt, Islamic Sharia Law permits authorities to cane, flog or stone women to death for either being in the company of a man who is not a family member, having sex outside marriage or committing adultery! Sharia (or God's law) is set forth in the Qu'ran. The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication—flog each of them with hundred stripes: Let no compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by God, if ye believe in God and the last day.[Qur'an 24:2] “Nor come nigh to adultery: for it is a shameful (deed) and an evil, opening the road (to other evils).'[Qur'an 17:32] It seems to me that the punishment is an evil imposed on women by those who have interpreted the Qu'ran for their own ends. Sharia Law is a violation of human rights and mandates complete control of women by men. In affect, it validates the notion that Islamic women are second-class citizens! Many Muslim women living in America and Australia are campaigning to stop Sharia Law from being condoned as an alternative or complimentary law in western countries and film-makers, many from Iran, have attempted to alert those in the west to the atrocities inflicted on Islamic women. One such film is The Stoning of Soraya M (Cyrus Nowrasteh (2008), which tells the true story of a woman whose husband desires to marry a fourteen year old girl, so conspires with other male authorities in an Iranian village to undermine his wife's fidelity so she will be condemned to death by stoning. It is a powerful drama that depicts the female characters ~ Soraya (Moshan Marno) and her Aunt Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo) as strong, defiant women who are punished for daring to speak their mind and going against Sharia Law. The male characters in the film are revealed for what they are ~ manipulative, powerful, but ultimately cowardly in the way that they enact a law that benefits them, whilst keeping women totally subservient to their desires and needs. I couldn't help but draw a parallel between the scene towards the end of the film in which Soraya is buried up to her waist and stoned to death, with a powerful one in The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004) when Christ is flogged. In both scenes, human bodies ~ bloody and damaged become less and less human through disfiguration and take on the look of animals freshly slaughtered. Under Sharia Law a person stoned to death cannot be buried. So, in the film Zahra and other women take Soraya's body and lay her on the edge of a river. We then recall the beginning of the film in which Zahra has returned to the river the day after Soraya's death only to find that ferral dogs have eaten the woman's remains. Zahra washes a few remaining bones in the river and returns them to the earth. If Sharia Law is adopted in Australia and other western countries will we tolerate such behavior in our streets? The annihilation of women's rights, the humiliation, the pain and suffering! I support the fact that different cultures deal with morality in different ways, but surely this kind of cruel punishment cannot be condoned ~ it must surely be perceived as inhuman?!