Victim's Rights--Or Lack Thereof

Few of us here in the West don't bristle with outrage at the mere idea of the Islamic law which finds women guilty of a crime when they have been raped. The notion that any set of laws would demand four witnesses to an act of rape to prove that the intercourse wasn't consensual, and thus that the woman wasn't guilty of fornication, is so absurd as to defy any form of reason. Who on Earth is going to stand around and watch a rape happening, and not stop it?!? Such observers would not be impartial witnesses, but voyeurs of the sickest kind, and as such would be more likely to follow the rapist to his next victim than to stand up in court and put the blankety-blank blank away. Given this standard, what woman in her right mind is going to ever admit to being raped, let alone try to prosecute the perpetrator? It would be like screaming, "Kill me, or put me in jail. I'm guilty of being a victim." So, what is a woman living under Shari'a Law supposed to do? How about fight back? One young woman in Iran, named Nazanin Fatehi, did just that. She carried a knife for protection, and when three men attacked her and her 16-year-old niece, she stabbed one of them. That men later died. Guess what the Iranian courts decided? She's guilty of murder. They sentenced her to hang.

In a shocking display of sanity, an Iranian ayatollah set aside the verdict. In any civilized country that would be the end of it, but this is Iran. She's scheduled to be retried on January 10th. Powerline has the details.