Saving The World
Aug. 14th, 2010 07:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howeirdOver on FB, a musician I admire greatly has been flooding the newsfeed with pleas for us to sign petitions, and basically do anything we can to stop Iran from stoning a woman to death. It started (and continues) with the case of Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiaani and has widened into all executions by stoning.
I am tempted to hide my friend's posts, but I do not because as much as I am certain that no amount of influence from outside will make Iran change, I am also certain that the best way to change the world for the better is to pick a cause, focus, spread the word, and keep pushing until the world changes. I have seen it happen so many times in my lifetime. I helped once in my tiny insignificant way to end the war in VietNam and bring down Richard Nixon. I failed big-time attempting to block Ronald Reagan's presidential nomination, but I tried -went as far as to become a Republican precinct committeeman so I could vote in the state convention. I was the first one to tell two German women about the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. It was fall of 1989, we were on a boat heading for a secluded island off the shores of Thailand. I had seen it in the Thai newspapers that morning, the foreign papers had not arrived yet. I have no connection to it, but seeing Nelson Mandela go from political prisoner to President is another example. And the fall of the Soviet Union. And on and on.
But stoning adulteresses is in the Old Testament and the Koran. It's right there next to an eye for an eye and cutting off the right arm of thieves. Chances are less than zero that any of our buddies in the other Islamic nations would ask Iran to violate the holy books, and considering how much death and destruction the US has engaged in next door to them, Iran has no reason to take pleas from us seriously either.
But that's no reason not to try.
I am tempted to hide my friend's posts, but I do not because as much as I am certain that no amount of influence from outside will make Iran change, I am also certain that the best way to change the world for the better is to pick a cause, focus, spread the word, and keep pushing until the world changes. I have seen it happen so many times in my lifetime. I helped once in my tiny insignificant way to end the war in VietNam and bring down Richard Nixon. I failed big-time attempting to block Ronald Reagan's presidential nomination, but I tried -went as far as to become a Republican precinct committeeman so I could vote in the state convention. I was the first one to tell two German women about the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. It was fall of 1989, we were on a boat heading for a secluded island off the shores of Thailand. I had seen it in the Thai newspapers that morning, the foreign papers had not arrived yet. I have no connection to it, but seeing Nelson Mandela go from political prisoner to President is another example. And the fall of the Soviet Union. And on and on.
But stoning adulteresses is in the Old Testament and the Koran. It's right there next to an eye for an eye and cutting off the right arm of thieves. Chances are less than zero that any of our buddies in the other Islamic nations would ask Iran to violate the holy books, and considering how much death and destruction the US has engaged in next door to them, Iran has no reason to take pleas from us seriously either.
But that's no reason not to try.
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Date: 2010-08-15 09:47 pm (UTC)The stoning thing is remarkably gross.