Which the Most Loathsome?

The Islamic Republic of Iran, that rabidly theocratic state where Islam rules and human rights are forfeit by right of the Divine, has demonstrated that humane sensitivities among the Basiji militia, the Republic Guard have been little tempered by religion. Their brutal thuggishness and utter disregard for other human beings set them aside as paid-up members in the legion of history's legendary human monsters.

Hushed stories being leaked to the media from the inner confines of the secretive regime are no mere urban legends. Young men and women, incarcerated by a righteous clerical aristocracy of unchallenged political power angered at the protesters' arrogance in questioning the legality of the recently-past re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have none to protect them.

They are brutalized, forced to confess to misdeeds that had never entered their minds, to recant their association with foreign elements intent in discrediting the legitimacy of the Islamic regime, and then treated to the tender care of the torturers and rapists among them. This is capital punishment of outstanding proportions, meting out punishment proportionate to the purported sins committed against the state.

Their families are granted permission to retrieve their poor broken bodies, on condition that they say nothing, do nothing, insist on nothing to implicate the government, nor to hold its minions to account. Justice there is none. Pain and bewilderment exist in large dimensions.

And then there is Iran's neighbour, the newly-minted democratic Iraq. No longer under the firm control of its former dictator who governed in a vile and vicious manner without religion; still Islamic, but secularly governed. Under which administration minorities did suffer, and those who were restive under the control of the Baathist regime were held to account for their restiveness.

But there was freedom of another kind.

Now, with the Beast of Baghdad toasted in the ovens of hell, another Iraq has emerged, far from the Iraq that waged a bloodthirsty battle with Iran in which the youth of both countries served as fodder for tribal triumphs. Iraq has now re-established itself, it holds general elections, it poses as a state mindful of the legitimacy of its Sunni, Shia and Kurd populations, (albeit still restive, factionally hate-inspired).

Iraq and Iran are now brotherly, as befits two theistic States, majority Shi'ite ruled.

Another minority, once protected, now deathly vulnerable has been isolated and seen as ripe for the picking. The Mahdi army, that great Shiite beast of religious fervor has taken it upon itself to honour Islam by abducting Iraqi homosexuals and submitting them to the wrath of the righteous. Even the regular Iraqi army is complicit, identifying, abducting and delivering to their persecutors those Iraqis who are gay, but unhappily so.

An orgy of grotesque torture, unimaginable in its brutish inventiveness and the pain and torment it provokes, proceeds apace. The end result is an unfortunate number of untimely deaths. They too are the most vulnerable. So place your bets and take your pick; Iran or Iraq; which, in your esteemed opinion, stands foursquare and proud to receive the glittering medal of honouring Islam?

Both? Why, how generously perspicacious!