 Serial Killer in Iran, The Forbidden Chapter (DVD)
"Who is to be judged?" wrote the conservative newspaper Jomhuri Islami. "Those who look to eradicate the sickness or those who stand at the root of the corruption?" Such sentiments are expressed by the killer's merchant friends at the Mashhad bazaar, one of whom says with a laugh: "He did the right thing. He should have continued." Hanaei was executed last year, still screaming in shock that he wasn't going to be rescued by conservatives in the Iranian government. What is disturbing about this case is how extreme violence against those who are most powerless and vulnerable can be justified by extreme religious beliefs and absolutist ideas about morality and sexual purity. All that mattered about these women is that they sold sex for money - not their suffering, not their deaths, not the grief of their children, and not even the social circumstances that led them to a life of prostitution. Religious extremists place their interpretation of God's principles of sexual purity far ahead of human love and kindness, and for that they diminish their own humanity. They are able representatives of other-worldly systems in which the human factor is the least important.
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