Re: An eye for an eye?
^ blind, yes, but safer. I am a strong advocate of eye-for-an eye punishment when the damage imparted is irreparable and irreversible (with some exceptions). Rape is an exception -- if proven gulity, the rapist should be hanged, not raped.
Critics who vehemently argue against the death penalty in the US, claim that the instituition of death penalty has never acted as a deterrent to crime. To prove thier case, they show that crime rates of states that have death penalty instituted are no better than the states that dont have it. So, what happened?
The Islamic (or cultural) practice of punishing a criminal in public (stoning, lashing, hanging), labeled as "barbaric" by every westerner--even by the avid proponents of capital punishment-- has its tremendous advantage as a visual deterrent for the potential criminals. It is one thing for a potential rapist to read the news of death of a convicted rapist by lethal injection in the confines of a small room screened from public eye, and quite another to atually go to Times Square and see him get publicly hanged. Pleasant? No. Politically correct? No. Effective as a deterrence to crime? yes, of course.