TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Ameneh Bahrami is certain that one day she'll meet someone, fall in love and get married. But when her wedding day comes, her husband won't see her eyes, and she won't see her husband. Bahrami is blind, the victim of an acid attack by a spurned suitor. If she gets her way, her attacker will suffer the same fate. The 31-year-old Iranian is demanding the ancient punishment of "an eye for an eye," and, in accordance with Islamic law, she wants to blind Majid Movahedi, the man who blinded her.... "I don't want to blind him for revenge," Bahrami said in her parents' Tehran apartment. "I'm doing this to prevent it from happening to someone else."
You know, I find it hard to believe that, here in the 21st century, we still find ourselves dealing with knuckle-dragging males who've managed to convince themselves that women exist for their pleasure and entertainment- and are willing to twist their religion to support this delusion. The reality that the distaff half of the population might actually be capable of independent thought, action, and desire seems a foreign concept to these idjits, some of whom are willing to go to absurd lengths to satisfy their lust and desire for control over women. Unable to win over the women of their dreams on their own merits, they revert to their primitive "women are property" philosophy and take what they feel is rightfully theirs. This is, after all, the natural order of things, right?
I really don't want this to devolve into a rant against Iran or Fundamentalist/Conservative Islam. The reality, though, is that both are merely products of a male-dominated power structure designed primarily to perpetuates it's own continued dominance. Having twisted Islam into a philosophy almost unrecognizable to those who truly understand the teachings of Muhammad, the Iranian power structure now relies on the state religion as a means of maintaining political power. Because of this, Ameneh Bahrami is neither the first woman to suffer at the hands of a man...nor will she be the last. When ignorance rules, the ignorant will trample and destroy anything that stands between them and their primitive, reflexive desires.
I'm not normally one to advocate for retributive justice, but perhaps it's time that the man monster who would carry out this sort of attack got a taste of his own medicine. Perhaps if men got the message that they will get every bit as good as they give, women will be able to stop living in fear. Then again, as long men who hate women control the levers of power, men like Majid Movahedi will have free reign to treat women like property, whose sole purpose is their own self-aggrandizement.
I can only hope that a special place in Hell awaits men like Majid Movahedi. He gives the rest of us who do respect women a bad name.
