An Eye For An Eye: Iranian Court Orders The Blinding Of Man In Retribution For Brawl

The Iranian Supreme Court has again shocked the world with the application of the medieval Islamic Sharia law. In the most recent case, the court literally ordered “an eye for any eye” in sentencing a man (identified only as 28-year-old Saman) have his eye gouged out in retribution for blinding another man.

The victim, a 25-year-old named Jalal, was blinded unintentionally during a brawl with a metal rod. That means that under the primitive Sharia system Saman owes Jalal an eye. Just last year, another court ordered the removal of a man’s left eye in the city of Qoms under Sharia law. In 2010, a Sharia court ordered the actual pouring of acid into the eye of a defendant as retribution for an acid attack.

These “courts” are merely extensions of the Islamic clerics who maintain control over the political and legal systems in the country. The ordering of such barbaric punishments make it difficult to discern the true difference with groups like ISIS other than a pretense of judicial process. Yet even in countries like Saudi Arabia (which are close allies to the United States) sharia law is portrayed as a test of faith and some ideal system of justice. In reality, it is a crude version of retributive justice that is only slightly more developed than the state of nature.