From studying political philosophy in college, I learned that defining “justice” is impossible. Even so, we like to grope about for its meaning. For example, many political philosophers have explored the connection between justice and law. The conclusion? It’s always tenuous. Rule by law — as opposed to rule by tyrants — seems at first glance to be something that, by constraining people, is a form of injustice. Yet by permitting people to go about their lives without fear of arbitrary retribution, rule by law actually frees people. No matter what, law always has its roots in particular customs, and because customs vary widely from society to society, laws vary widely as well.
In the tragic case of
Ameneh Bahrami, an Iranian woman now living in Spain, the fundamental question of political philosophy — What is justice? — comes to the fore. In 2004, Bahrami was disfigured and blinded in both eyes in an acid attack perpetrated by a suitor whom she’d rejected. A Tehran court has just ruled in favor of Bahrami’s request that justice be meted out in the form of the Islamic rule of what seems to translate as “equivalence” — in this particular case, the equivalence will be that the attacker have acid dropped into one of his eyes. (Apparently, since Iranian law considers a man to be worth two women, only one of the suitor’s two eyes will have acid poured on it. What can I say?) The suitor, Majid Movahedi, is currently slated to have acid poured into one of his eyes.
In a press interview, Bahrami insisted that she wants Movahedi’s eye blinded not out of revenge, but rather to prevent other women from suffering acid attacks — which seems to be an all too common way for some men in various Asian countries to treat women with whom they’re angry. But to many Westerners, it sounds pretty much like plain old-fashioned revenge — and barbaric revenge, at that.
After centuries of crucifying people, breaking them on the wheel, flaying them alive, drawing and quartering them or burning them in public squares, and mounting dead heads on pikes as road or bridge decorations, Western societies decided these practices were barbaric. True, the United States is home to state-endorsed executions and a very ugly prison system (we have the highest reported incarceration rate in the world, with 1 in 100 Americans behind bars — a story in its own right). But Western culture, taken as a whole, rejects forms of justice that are either accompanied by revenge or include such punishments as lashings and stonings, or “equivalence” forms of justice (such as amputations) that are embodied in the notion of “an eye for an eye.”
In an opinion piece in The Orlando Sentinel, Jacob M. Appel, a health-care attorney who teaches at New York University, argues against Bahrami’s request for “equivalence” justice. Sympathetic though he is to her plight, Appel argues that since she now lives in Spain, she lives under the rules of Western law. He argues that the Spanish should prosecute her for her participation in the Tehran-ordered punishment, since she’s participating in a clear violation of Western rights. Appel thinks that if the punishment is carried out (keep in mind, the punishment is at her behest) it will open the door to all kinds of abuse by immigrants living in Western society. As an example, he offers the possibility that an immigrant might return home to testify in a trial that results in death by stoning.
If Bahrani hadn’t moved to Spain, and hadn’t issued her request to the Iranian court from there, perhaps we wouldn’t pay much attention to her case. After all, we observe from afar many instances of other countries’ stonings and lashings, but most of us aren’t inclined to interfere too often. We think for the most part that we should leave notions of justice to particular societies, and not get involved every time cultural values are radically different from our own. In the Bahrani case, however, two opposing understandings of justice, not to mention two very different sets of customs and laws, have suddenly collided under what seems like one roof.
Anyone with a smidgen of sensitivity to the relentless abuse inflicted on women by men — throughout the ages, and in every part of the world — feels strong empathy for Bahrami. Not since Clytemnestra has a woman acted with such clarity of purpose, and for such good reason, in exacting revenge.
It’s horribly satisfying, I admit, to imagine that a man who threw acid on a woman’s face should in turn have acid poured on his own face. Such a punishment embodies a kind of real and raw justice.
But frustrating though it is to admit this, I have to agree with Appel’s conclusion that we ought not to endorse Bahrami’s request. Western history and culture have led us to a very different notion of justice from equivalence punishment, and to pretend otherwise is to deny who we are.
