In Iran, a 13-year-old girl has been sentenced to death because her 15-year-old brother got her pregnant. The boy, of course, doesn't face a death sentence - he'll only be whipped 150 times with a lash. Zhila Izadi just gave birth to her child so now she is eligible for stoning by the community.

Iran Focus reports (via TalkLeft):

She was accused of committing ‘moral sin’ and giving birth to an ‘unholy child’. Her brother a 15-year-old boy who was also accused and is currently in prison in Tehran was given a sentence of 150 lashes, in accordance with Islamic laws. ... As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Iran is bound not to execute child offenders.

Women's Forum Against Fundamentalism in Iran comments:

Jila was raped and impregnated by her brother and Iran’s clerical judge has sentenced her to death by stoning. According to the Iranian regime's penal code, stoning is the punishment for those who commit adultery. Jila did not commit adultery; rather she is a victim of rape. Stoning in Iran is carried out as "the condemned are wrapped head to foot in white shrouds and buried up to their waists.“ The misogynous regime of Tehran even details the difference between the stoning of men vs. women. “The female condemned are buried up to their neck to prevent their escape.” Furthermore, "the stones are specifically chosen so they are large enough to cause pain, but not so large as to kill the condemned immediately. They are guaranteed a slow, torturous death. Sometimes their children are forced to watch.”

Iran, by the way, has endorsed Bush for president:

"We haven't seen anything good from Democrats," Rowhani told state-run television in remarks that, for the first time in recent decades, saw Iran openly supporting one US presidential candidate over another. "We should not forget that most sanctions and economic pressures were imposed on Iran during the time of Clinton," Rowhani said. "And we should not forget that during Bush's era, despite his hard-line and baseless rhetoric against Iran, he didn't take, in practical terms, any dangerous action against Iran."

Though Iran generally does not publicly wade into US presidential politics, it has a history of preferring Republicans over Democrats, who tend to press human rights issues. "We do not desire to see Democrats take over," Rowhani said when asked if Iran was supporting Kerry against Bush.

Conservatives make a lot of noise about terrorists preferring Kerry to Bush even though we haven't actually heard anything from terrorists on that matter — this is something that conservatives simply imagine to be true because they assume that Bush will do more to harm terrorists than Kerry, then use the conclusion to demonstrate that Bush must be doing more to harm terrorists than Kerry. Sensible, isn't it?

Here, however, we have a repressively theocratic regime that we know has helped sponsor terrorism in the past. They are even members of the "Axis of Evil." Whom do they support? George W. Bush. Maybe they recognize a kindred religious spirit?

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