The Stoning of Soraya M.: A Story of Injustice in Iran [Paperback]

How do you give five stars to a book on a small town execution? Freidoune Sahebjam has written an insightful and brave account of an event unimaginable to most of us. I found this book helpful in showing me once again what a deadly infection fundamentalism can become and how this sickness can overtake an entire town in one afternoon. Indeed, to value purity over simple things like life and love and truth will always lead to death and heartache. Even more so if God is mixed in. This is the message of Sahebjam's book.

This paperback can be read in one sitting and was penned by a French born and raised son of an Iranian Ambassador. It remains to this day a banned book in Iran, a country and culture not that far removed from a similar but different ethnic cleansing style fundamentalism I saw in Israel, Egypt and Palestine this week where I finished this book and wrote this review while on pilgrimage, amidst a backdrop of guns and soldiers and a chopper overhead. Muslims killing Christians and burning churches in nearby Egypt while we were there. Same old same old. We took in some 7,000 Jewish soldiers pointing assault rifles at Palestinians in the Holy Land, in Jerusalem, near the Western Wall, not far from the site and on the same day one Palestinian youth was shot and killed as I just learned from an airport monitor. We heard the gunfire over the wall. 34 were arrested; 12 killed the day we took off. Same old same old. Sad.

But back to our small town in 1979. Soraya was a mother and wife married to an archetypal creep of a man who went so far as to bring to his own house prostitutes in order to insult his wife and offload his marriage; a man unwilling to count the cost of an honorable divorce. The religious execution plot was hatched by a man willing to make murderous co-conspirators out of neighbors and friends he'd known since childhood.

Indeed Soraya's story was for me more than just another evil account of a befouled patriarchy. It was a death road telling of male politics and power trumping the basic spiritual values of truth, love, human kindness and the purity of a simple smile. On the flip side, this ritual and religious killing story and how it happened is also a tale of the courage of a loving aunt and niece against a male collusion of lust and lies. It's a story about divorce and love and sex, power and money. Your basic movie themes. But this one really happened. It was for me a story also of love and beauty and truth and a woman willing to risk the friendliness of a smile she was known for and would eventually cost her everything. So yes, buy this book. It will energize you on the dangers of fundamentalism, energize you perhaps to speak up early when you see the demon of false purity coming your way. That's my take.

Sure, this work, now in English, could have been written and translated a little better, especially since it just came out in a new edition. But it is a miracle the story ever saw the light of day in the first place. I suggest you see the Netflix 2008 Lionsgate title (starring Aghdashloo and Marno directed by Nowrasteh.) The violence of bad religion in that film will be even more real for you if with images to hang words on as you read.

For a companion study I'd recommend The Purity Myth by a young, 4th wave feminist, Jessica Valente. Like The Stoning of Soraya M., the focus of purity mongers (usually men) remains women and almost always mixes in religion. Bad religion. And of course politics. Purity rants always get around to being about sex--female sexuality and the purity of women. This was certainly the theme in that small, unnamed village outside Tehran three decades back during post-revolution Iran. The author uses fictional names for the people and town and region for obvious reasons but the work reads like journalism. Sahebjam describes himself, in fact, as a journalist and a theologian.

Through the introduction and book jacket you'll learn that some 1500 women have been stoned in the last twenty five years in the Middle East. OK, some men were stoned, too. But not many. Mostly it's women and mostly it's death dished up around the purity concept. Around evil, around sin. Yes, religious purity. And honor, too. Usually family or town honor. Far more effective and powerful than simply the us/them theme which serves as the engine of most wars. If you fancy yourself spiritual or religious and you have doubt about the price of walking down the purity road, read the story of Soraya. And as you read, I'd advise against the temptation of seeing this problem as only an Islam thing. It was for me far more than that. For me this book was about fundamentalism, those who say they want purity--not theirs, of course, but mine. And about a culture which does not value purity of heart so much as superficial, legalistic easy to go after purity so often aimed at others and specifically, women.

My takeaway from this book: reaching for purity and sinlessness anywhere but in your own heart and life will lead to death most every time. Indeed, who can throw a stone but a man or woman truly pure within.

In this book it's the men who throw the stones, of course. Not a pretty story line. But just as many women stood by and let it happen. No woman in that town but Soraya's aunt paid the price of speaking up. Silence remains an equally bloody stone.

One could go on and on about the price of trying to bring back 7th century Islam. Instead, read this book if you've ever gone to confession in your church and forgotten how you judged someone else rather than yourself in the past week; judged someone else as sinful or impure.

Soraya's story indeed brought back for me the fear of freedom thing that Jack Nicholson's character showed us in Dennis Hooper's Easy Rider classic, how an us/them deadly hate thing was alive in the South then and probably now; how it flowers in a mortal wound well beyond the death of Captain America back in the day. The same hate is alive and well now, of course. Same old, same old.

I don't mean to soft peddle real problems with Islam. In Egypt, where 90% are Muslims and 10% Christians today, in recent months and weeks Eastern Orthodox Copts have been shot (monks even) and killed. And 84% of the population in Egypt today still believes that should one convert from Islam to Christianity he deserves to be executed. Of course stoning is the ancient way to get the job done here.

It's been 30 years since Soraya's brutal death in Iran at the hands of 250 religious people in her village. There's a picture of her in this book. Read it for her and the white dress she wore that day. You'll feel awful but at the same time better. Because you'll know her story.

An excellent account and example of unequality and injustice of women that exists in some cultures around the world in this current time. I had the opportunity to also view the DVD at the time I read the book which gave more meaning to how and why the book was written.

This story will make your heart ache and will make you want to change our world. It was respectfully told and not glamorized. Soraya deserves to have her story told and I am very glad to have had the chance to read it.

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