The Iranian mullahs and stoning Soraya

It’s Thursday  and the death toll as a result of the demonstrations against the current regime in Iran continues to rise.

And as much as I needed to write something light on Thursdays, I couldn’t help combining the intended light aspect of my column today to the current situation in Iran, a fight to remove the Ayatollahs from power, 39 years after their doomed revolution that brought the mullahs to power.

And the only way to keep it light yet disseminate a message that needs to be conveyed is to advice my readers to watch a movie called The Stoning of Soraya.

The movie is based on an international bestseller book that tells the story of one of the victims of stoning in modern Iran. Soraya’s husband Ghorban-Ali wanted a way out of his marriage in order to marry a 14-year-old girl but did not want to support two families or return Soraya’s dowry so he plans his exit from his marriage with Soraya by asking the mullahs in his village to support him in accusing Soraya of adultery.

Corrupt village authorities and mullahs support Ghorban Ali and Soraya is buried to her waist, and stoned to death. The first stone that hits her face is cast by her own son.

This 2008 American Persian language drama film was adapted from French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjams 1990 book Le Femme Lapidee  and stars Academy Award nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo and American actor Jim Caviezel who plays the role of a foreign journalist who was touring the village where this crime was committed a day before he had arrived. The story is narrated to him by Soraya’s aunt.

For those who do not have a clear picture of the power of the mullahs in Iran and how corrupted they are, this movie will clarify this picture for you. It will show you how mullahs abuse their power and under the umbrella of religion get away with their crimes and this unfortunately is the current situation in Iran.

I have personally seen this movie a lot and as much as it may not be a true story, the messages behind it are nothing but the truth.

Iran since the doomed revolution in 1979, from a modern state that was advancing on all levels, became an enemy not just to its neighbors but its own people. As the death toll rises, so does the hope that this regime may come to an end, the regime of the mullahs.

For Iran to defeat the current regime and the revolutionary guard that have for the past four decades practised atrocities against the Iranian people, we have to unfortunately expect the death toll to rise. But change always comes from within and the Iranians will die on the streets in order for upcoming generations to live. All we can do now is wait and see whether the mullahs will win again or the people of Iran will succeed in overthrowing a brutal regime that violated the Iranian peoples’ basic human rights.