BEFORE NEDA, the young woman who died before the world’s eyes during post-election protests in Iran, there was Soraya, a 35-year-old mother who was stoned to death on trumped-up adultery charges in Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1986 Iran. Soraya’s supposedly true story was told in French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam’s novel The Stoning of Soraya M.
The book has been adapted into an unrelievedly grim movie by Cyrus
Nowrasteh, who wrote the screenplay with his wife. James Caviezel plays
Sahebjam, whose car breaks down (conveniently) in a remote Iranian
village, where desperate, chador-draped Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo),
tells him about the killing of her niece, Soraya (Mozhan Marnò),
whose story unfolds in flashback.
Soraya is married to the abusive Ali (Navid Negahban), who wants a
divorce so he can marry a 14-year-old. Although polygamy is allowed
under sharia law, Ali hopes to avoid supporting Soraya financially.
When Soraya takes a job housekeeping for a local widower, Ali seizes
the opportunity to accuse her of adultery, punishable by death.
Complicit in the scheme are the village’s corrupt mullah and mayor, who
subvert sharia jurisprudence to justify murder.
The timing of this release, as neoconservative hawks push for
military intervention in Iran, raises suspicion that it’s actually a
skillful piece of anti-Muslim propaganda. Its producers are the folks
who brought you similar religioso-sadistic thrills in Mel Gibson’s
The Passion of the Christ (Caviezel was Passion’s bloody
Jesus). That Stoning has been embraced as proof of Islam’s
inhumanity by Watergate crook-turned-evangelical Christian Chuck Colson
and denounced as sensationalism by Amnesty International also suggests
the movie has a hidden political purpose and should be approached with
skepticism.
This article appears in Jul 15-21, 2009.
Amnesty International would want you to think that the worst thing Muslims do is throw shoes at George W. How soon we forget that Daniel Pearl was “beheaded” for exposing the truth about Islam. Can you imagine the hatred that would have to be in a persons heart, to take a knife, put it to someone’s throat, and hack through a neck? Stoner’s have the same hatred only lack the guts to take someones head off. Wake up America – this does happen!
And furthermore, most people would like to ignore the truth about Islam. Perhaps this movie is trying to wake people up to the fact that Islam is not tolerant. Go ahead and ignore this movie and sum it up as sensationalism by conservatives. They’ll only say “I told you so” when Islam starts gaining momentum in the USA. If you really want to know what is going on in the Middle East, read Brigette Gabriel’s book “Why They Hate” or They Must Be Stopped”. Neither the Passion of The Christ or this movie is a joke. Ignore them at your own peril.