In this "everybody's world," particularly the parts at which Hi Magazine is pitched, there are troubles that seem a bit remote from hair and nail care. In Iraq, half the population, according to one poll, believes that a man has a right to beat his wife if she disobeys him (and the Koran gives this sanction). In Iran, as Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi reports in Front Page Magazine (www.frontpage.com), women continue to be stoned to death for the crime of adultery. Accompanying this story is a photo (smuggled out of Iran) of a weeping woman being buried up to her waist in preparation for stoning to death.
The size of the stones to be used in such executions is specified by law. "Penal Law in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Article 116: Stones used in stoning should be neither so big as to kill the adulterous at the first or second blow, nor as small as a pebble." Other punishments meted out by the Islamic Republic include cutting off hands, arms and legs, and plucking out the eyes.
In Saudi Arabia, an Australian man has been sentenced to 16 months in prison and 300 lashes for a crime his wife may have committed (stealing equipment from a hospital). His flogging, inflicted 50 strokes at a time, by a guard with a Koran under his arm, has already begun. "The lashing," he wrote to a friend in Melbourne, "is to humiliate and control, and I draw a large crowd as I am one of those Western ungodly people, but they shall never hear me yell." In Saudi Arabia, the punishment for Muslims who convert away from Islam is death.
And the State Department magazine prattles about facials.