The news of an Iranian girl murdered by her father in sleep shocked the whole country once again. 13 year old Romania’s throat was slashed by a sickle in a village in the north of Iran. Murderer was her father and his reason was her elope with a 35 year old man (the eloping with that specific man was his problem not the man’s age). The more I read about it, the more problems I see and all goes back to the Islamic laws.
First, when media outlets published the news, they romanticized her relation-
ship and her elope as an act of romantic rebellion while all I see is that she was a victim of a pedophile’s grooming. A 35 year old having relationship with a 13 year old is pedophilia! It’s a crime in most parts of the world and it’s fucking disgusting! She was tricked and groomed by a guy from her village to run away with him. If the father had agreed to their marriage, it would have been another case of child marriage. Under Islamic laws in Iran, it is totally fine for an adult man to marry a girl as young as 13. What’s worse is that,it is 13 lunar years equal to 12 years and 5 months, as long as the girl’s father is okay.
Furthermore, the father didn’t have a problem with the pedophile’s age but that it was more like a family issue. According to Iranian media, child marriage is very common in that village and almost all of the girls get married around the age of 13 (again, lunar years) to adults. Under the Islamic laws in Iran girls are allowed to get married from the age of 13. Perfect law to promote pedophilia,right? Also under Islamic sharia in general, the age limit is 9! so basically if families want to do it, no one can stop them! Following the footpath of the Prophet who married Aisha when she was 6 and started raping her when she was 9 (lunar years!). How can you expect a theocracy like Islamic republic of Iran to practice human rights and ethical laws while they follow a pedophile prophet?
Second, when the police caught her, she told the judge of her fear and her father’s intentions but they gave her up to the father. The father had already discussed filicide and its punishment with a lawyer. Having made sure that he wouldn’t get a death penalty because he was the father, he grotesquely decapitated her own daughter in sleep using a sickle and then he went to the police station to turn himself in. An honour killing in which the murderer genuinely thinks he regained his lost honour.
Third, her obituary is another disturbing example of how Islam controls and owns women. The obituary shows a rose instead of her photo which is actually a thing in Iran. Women don’t get their photos printed in their obituary. It might be too provocative for others! Then, it reads daughter of (name of her father, the murderer), granddaughter of (name of the granddads), sister of (name of the brother), niece of (name of the uncles). No mention of her mother, her sister, or any other woman related to her. It’s just like a group of men who owned her. What about her mother? did she get a say? or is she going to be murdered too? How important is the father that even after her murder his name comes right as the first and most important family. Should we call this a family anymore? or maybe we should call it Board of the owners or something similar.
Where do we even look for the problem? Honour killing and leniency towards it, discriminatory family laws, Child-marriage, pedophilia, eloping, domestic violence, capital punishment and qisas, rape, patriarchy, broken law system, Where do we begin?
Is this the ethics and the morality that Islam talks about? Does this religion or any other religion even qualify to teach us what is moral and what is immoral?
Let’s just imagine for a moment that Islam and shia didn’t exist in Iran, and the laws were based on morality and humanism. There were better education towards these issues, a non-biased law system, fair family laws that supported women equally, strong laws against child marriage, prosecution of pedophilia, access to counselling services with no judgement or religion, etc. Would this ever have happened? If Romina had been educated, if the 35 year old pedophile had been arrested in the first place, if the father hadn’t had any prejudice or a belief system to tell him that her act was dishonour. This is not an isolated incident. It happens everyday around the world and the root is always the same thing. Fucking religion!
Decent atheist 
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