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August 10,2001
As the clamor of the crowd grew louder, toy store clerk Ahmed Karimi stepped out of his shop in a suburban Tehran mall to investigate. Before him, about 400 people had gathered, gaping at the sight of a young man, stripped shirtless, with his arms tied above his head to a tree. A bearded man shouted into a loudspeaker: "This man is guilty of possessing and selling alcohol." Then a second man raised a leather whip and cracked it across the young man's back as he counted, "One! Two! Three!" With each lash, the young man screamed, first to a Muslim Imam, then of his repentance. After the 17th lash, with his head hung low, he was released, quietly dressed and boarded a mini-bus. Several other young men in line for the same punishment were were tied face down to a narrow, wooden plank for their whippings. Disgust, fury and nervous laughter spread through the crowd. "If this must happen, why not to thieves or murders?" demanded one sad and revolted bystander. "Are young people who drink such a public menace?"
Since late July, Tehran has witnessed a baffling revival of the practice of public flogging, a form of punishment prescribed by Shari'a (Islamic law) but abandoned by the Islamic Republic for over two decades. In the parks and squares of the capital, young people found guilty of petty social offenses like drinking alcohol, attending parties and selling pornography are being rounded up every few days and lashed before crowds. The punitive resurgence threatens to tarnish Iran's image abroad, has alarmed ordinary Iranians, and produced yet another factional spat between offended reformists and hardliners in the judiciary who uphold public flogging as a necessary weapon in the war against vice. "This is a dangerous game, with our national interest at stake," says Saeed Laylaz, a pro-reform editor.
This being Iran, the fact that clerical and judicial hardliners are isolated in their enthusiasm for public floggings doesn't mean the practice will stop. Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi-Lari recently came out against the punishment, and the Tehran governor's office said all such court orders must go through a provincial security council, on the grounds that the Ministry must have oversight over proceedings that may create a public disturbance. But hardline Judiciary Chief Hashemi Shahroudi, an ardent traditionalist, is unlikely to bow to such pressures, despite the worry of moderate right-wingers who fear support for the practice undermines their claims to compassionate conservatism. "Shahroudi's attitudes aren't far off from the Taleban," says Laylaz. Reformists have qualms not only over the practice, but suspicions as to its curious post-presidential election re-emergence. "Suddenly after 23 years we're flogging in public again," says Hamidreza Jalaipour, a pro-reform publisher. "It's clearly an attempt to turn world public opinion against Khatami."
As united as reformist politicians are against the floggings, it's unlikely that they can use their parliamentary majority to influence an area ultimately bound to a judge's discretion. What reformists can point to is how public floggings deviate from both the letter and spirit of Islamic law. "The intention of a lashing isn't physical harm, but public humiliation," notes MP and physician Alireza Nouri. But often this is not the case. Volunteers who mete out the lashings can be brutal, and judges who support the practice don't bother sending along monitors. One doctor in a Tehran emergency ward recalls treating a woman who despite being four months pregnant had been lashed into near unconsciousness, her back covered in blood. "They had told her, 'We'll whip you until the filth growing inside you is rinsed out'," he said.
While lashings have a basis in Islamic Shari'a, their utility as public deterrence is contingent upon a social environment prepared to accept, and thereby benefit from, the intended lesson, according to prominent dissident cleric Mohsen Kadivar, who opposes the practice. If social conditions are inhospitable, then finding more suitable methods is theologically justified. "Many Islamic jurists believe eliminating public lashings actually benefits Islam," he said. "If it's really appropriate, then why is it not being videotaped and broadcast on television or the news, so 60 million people can all be deterred?"