Warped Morality

Couple of stories of note (via Feministe):

A) A young woman in Iran was recently sentenced to death by hanging for defending herself and her 16 year old niece from would-be rapists:

As the girls tried to escape, the men once again attacked them, and at this point, Nazanin said, she stabbed one of the men in the chest. The teenage girl, however, broke down in tears in court as she explained that she had no intention of killing the man but was merely defending herself and her younger niece from rape, the report said.

B) Pakistani cleric Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi has offered a $1,000,000 bounty for the killing of cartoonists responsible for the Mohammed cartoons (see earlier post):

This is a unanimous decision by all imams of Islam that whoever insults the prophets deserves to be killed and whoever will take this insulting man to his end, will get this prize.

Firstly, I seriously doubt that this was really “a unanimous decision by all imams of Islam.” Secondly, I wonder what would happen if Sean Hannity offered a $1,000,000 prize for the killing of Ted Rall on the basis that he insulted Generalissimo El Busho. Qureshi should be jailed. Instead of “deserves to be killed” I think the strongest consequence they should be able to demand is “deserves to be excommunicated” considering the nature of the offense.