Sunday, December 14, 2008

Symbolic Retribution

Since we are reading Dante's The Inferno, I have had symbolic retribution on the mind. When I ran across this article in CNN, I wondered what you would think about this story: http://tinyurl.com/5cbl9l

This story tells the story of an Iranian woman who was blinded by a stalker with acid. She has requested that he also be blinded--under Islamic law of "an eye for an eye." As the article states, "Attacking women and girls by throwing acid in their faces is sufficiently common in countries such as Bangladesh and Cambodia that groups have been formed to fight it. Human rights organizations have condemned the practice in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is not clear how often such attacks take place in Iran. Iran and Saudi Arabia are the only countries that consider eye-gouging to be a legitimate judicial punishment, Human Rights Watch has said" (http://tinyurl.com/5cbl9l).

What do you think about this idea of "an eye for an eye"?