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Soraya's Warning to the Mullahs
“At its heart, this movie is a human drama filled with tension, peril, and hope,” Nowrasteh says, “but it is also a true story that I felt strongly had to be told, a story the whole world needs to know.” It’s astonishing true story of Zahra, the fearless aunt of Soraya who happens to spot a war correspondent passing through town to get his car fixed as he heads to the border. Soraya had been executed the day before, and her aunt's raw outrage gives her the courage to demand that the reporter tape-record her story.
The film is so suspenseful, to the point that the viewer might—for just a moment—hope that Soraya might be able to escape before her sentence can be carried out. There is no escape, however, and at the end, tragically, it comes as no surprise.
It also comes as no surprise that women around the world continue to be targeted for this type of shocking injustice. Gathering reliable statistics for such punishment is challenging, but reports suggest there have been at least 1,000 women stoned to death over the past 15 years in countries such as Iran, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
In 2008, a 13-year-old Somali girl was stoned by 50 men in a football stadium in front of a crowd of 1,000 spectators. According to BBC reports, the mob buried her up to her shoulders while she begged for her life, pleading “don’t kill me, don’t kill me.” Eleven people in Iran, nine of them women, were waiting to be stoned to death for adultery last year, according to Amnesty International. The United Nations estimates that 5,000 women each year become victims of "honor crimes" in which family members kill a woman who has allegedly brought dishonor on them.
Within the last year, two suspected cases have made headlines in the U.S. In Jonesboro, Georgia, last July, Chaudhry Rashid was accused of killing his daughter, Sandeela Kanwal, because she wanted out of an arranged marriage. In February, Aasiyah Hassan was stabbed multiple times and decapitated at an upstate New York television station. Her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, is believed to have become enraged because she filed for divorce days earlier. His trial is expected to begin in January.
The Stoning of Soraya M. is the first film drama to expose the torture of public stoning in the Muslim world. It is a credit to the Nowrastehs the execution scene itself avoids the graphic gore better suited for torture fetish films. Make no mistake, it’s a tough scene to watch but not just because of the implied violence. There’s an devastating emotional punch in the way the twisted judgment is delivered. Soraya must face her rock-wielding, divorce-seeking husband (who wants to be rid of her in order to marry a 14-year-old girl), other family members and neighbors she has known and cared for all her life.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
The Creeping Homegrown Threat
Steve Emerson is Executive Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and author of 5 books and countless articles on terrorism. His most recent book is Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the U.S.
America’s Homegrown Terrorists
Steve Emerson is Executive Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and author of 5 books and countless articles on terrorism. His most recent book is Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the U.S.
Call the Terrorists What They Are
Steve Emerson is Executive Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and author of 5 books and countless articles on terrorism. His most recent book is Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the U.S.
Controlled outrage with an intelligent response is always better unrestrained outrage. Timing is everything and a targeted response appropriate, seems Obama is on the right path despite the emotional response some would prefer.
Tho less frequent men who commit adultery are stoned also. Two in 2009 so far and several who were able to escape and flee the country.
The author of this article is leaving out the fact that many young people in Iran who are fighting for their freedom don't want the west's help. Last time we helped them we installed someone people weren't happy with....let's not make this our problem by being aggressive....you're like the drunk guy at the party that just won't stop fighting.
All we can do is speak out against them for doing things like this. it is a fact that good ideas spread faster than bad ideas, and eventually, there will be justice for people in Iran.
We cannot stand by and do nothing.
An intelligent, measured, and appropriate response to the cry of the freedom-seeking in any country is in keeping with our beliefs.
The subjugation of women and children, the treatment of them as property, cannot be defended even on the basis of religious freedom. Too many countries have honor killings, sex slaves, child slaves, female mutilation and the ritualized murder of the inconvenient or different.
If my neighbor browbeats and verbally abuses his wife and children, I need to mind my own business. She may think he has the right to do this. She may not regard it as abuse.
If he beats her, and the children, I absolutely have to interfere.
In the world, there are no police to call on a bullying government.
No one but us.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
finderj, I hate the mistreatment of women, too. I am appalled at the way women in Muslim country's are treated as well, but look what happend in Iraq, we have mad things WORSE for women there. Women have been oppressed in these societies for a terribly long time. If it was that easy to change things by force, wouldn't we have been in Afghanistan (where women are treated like dogs) long before 9/11? The number of troops that it would take to supervise the rights of women throughout the entire middle east does not exist....it is ridiculous to think that we could regulate that. These women need to earn their own freedom, just like American women did in the 20's.
Let's not have another disaster like Iraq, and let these people build up their own society, the way they want it. Take a breath...Iran's population is 70% young people, the mullahs are a dying breed, just give it some time.
If you only see one movie for the rest of your life watch this one?
The truth is that we are all more interested in Michael Jackson than Tehran.
America should stay blissfully ignorant if all they are going to see is cinematic propaganda. Either get off your but and seriously investigate the "cultural genocide" of Tibet by China, subjugation under "sharia" law, and the Czarist totalitarianism of Putin OR SHUT UP
All this can do is create a fury for military intervention.
If you have not seen any movie in the last 9 years, watch Sicko. Then do some homework and write some e-mails.
Take care of home first.
Emerson is a crusader of the worst kind. A dangerous zealot filled with spiritual arrogance. Ignorance, not religion, forms the basis of barbaric cultural norms.
Thank you.
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