Executing Virgins, Iran Style (but Islam is Peace!)

"Despite the fact that Iran’s penal code prohibits the execution of virgins, Iran executes more juveniles than any other country in the world.  The executions are conducted through hangings, stonings, and other barbaric measures consistent with Sharia law.  Since the age of personal responsibility in Iran is 13 for boys and 9 for girls, surely many of those sentenced to death are virgins.  How does the government get around this?  On the condition of anonymity, a Basiji guard recently spoke out to explain how Iran executes virgins.

"The Basiji is a volunteer paramilitary force founded by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.  Known as the people’s militia, it is subordinate to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and remains very loyal to Khomeini’s successor, the Supreme Leader Khamenei. 

"...The guard became a well-regarded member of the force.  His superiors were so impressed with him that they gave him the “honor” of temporarily marrying young girls prior to their executions.  The girls are forced into marriage with a prison guard, and then raped on their wedding night before being killed the next morning.

"The girls always fight back when their marriage is to be “consummated”, so sometimes the guards put sleeping pills into the girls’ food.  When the rapes were over, the guard would hear the girls crying and screaming.  He remembered one girl who clawed her own face and neck, resulting in deep scratches all over.  Though the non-consensual weddings are considered legal, the guard admitted that the girls were more afraid of their wedding nights than of their pending deaths.“By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die.”

"In Sharia law, certain crimes are punishable by death.  According to Amnesty International, the Ayatollah, who followed strict Sharia law, had twenty thousand girls and women executed in the first three years of his rule.  Though Islam does not prohibit the execution of virgins, it does teach that virgins go to Paradise after death.  Many Islamic clerics, not satisfied with merely cutting short the lives of young girls, also wanted to ensure that the girls would suffer an eternity in hell.  Therefore, Iran made it illegal to execute virgins, but created a legal loophole by ordering guards to “marry” and rape their prisoners.  Authorities in many other Islamic countries also order their guards to systematically rape female prisoners.  In Iran, the crimes of homosexuality, fornication, armed robbery, kidnapping, drug trafficking are among those deemed capital offenses.  Often fornication charges are leveled even when the accused is raped.  The victim is rarely able to “prove” her innocence due to a lack of due process and the fact that the testimony of females is worth one half that of a man’s..."

  Deborah Weiss