Killing in the Name

November 21, 2006 Peter

What do you get when you mix some pious religious fervor with frontier justice?

Iranian vigilantes gettin’ ‘er done for Allah, that’s what.

One young man, known only as Soheil, upset that “every night, my neighbor had parties and invited badly-veiled women,” reportedly set a neighbor’s luxury car ablaze “to teach him a lesson.”

The neighbor should count himself lucky that Soheil pulled his punches and targeted only the offender’s car rather than the offender himself. A university student in the Iranian town of Sabzevar wasn’t so fortunate–Towhid Ghafarzadeh Nadi was stabbed to death at a bus stop while talking to his wife. The attacker “told police that he ‘had acted because his religious sensibilities were injured by seeing a young man and a young woman talking in public.’”

As an alternative to the Iranian model, I submit one based on the Lone Ranger, who, in his unyielding pursuit of justice, doesn’t shoot to kill. There’s no need for an express lane to jahannam; the infidels will wind up there anyway and one doesn’t put one’s own claim to a stake in the land of milk and honey in jeopardy.