Three things drive me to write this e-mail. The first and simplest reason, I like personal freedom and women have been the universal victims of repression. Amina's case is a clarion call to all people who share that view.
Secondly, I remember my old travel buddy, Art, who told me how he saved two American women in Iran. They were being brutalized by their Iranian husbands, but got no help from the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The US embassy would not even renew their passports after the husbands had destroyed the originals. Through an informal network, the women were able to get false ones listing Art, for each at different times, as the husband. He then went out of Iran with each of them, posing as the husband. A dangerous act of heroism, had it been exposed. That was under the 'progressive' Shah. Image the plight of Iranian women under Khomeini and his successors.
Thirdly, and finally, I have read of Amina's sentence before. It exposes the mindless heartlessness of Sharia Law. If any other proof of the barbarity of these laws is needed, one has only to look at the fatwa issued against the Nigerian journalist, who made an essentially harmless comment about Allah and the beauty contestants. The savage massacres of Christians by their Muslim neighbours over these comments only shows the Sharia mentality.
Keep the pressure up. Let the Nigerian government know that, should this hypocritical judgment be fulfilled, then world opinion will be unforgiving, especially if the adultrous male is freed.
