er harsh punishments, meted out by irregular tribunals of religious fanatics or "revolutionary guards." Those so punished, even when not wholly innocent victims of arbitrary police abuse, are imagined to be largely petty criminals, or persons who have committed sexual offenses no longer normally punished as crimes in the West. Trials and punishments, in the popular Western image, are often arbitrary, and are carried out under summary conditions, in front of jeering, bloodthirsty mobs.
In short, the image of "Islamic justice" in the West is one that contains and combines long standing Western stereotypes of Muslims with new stereotypes that have arisen out of the Western perception of contemporary events (Lippmann, McConville, and Yerushalmi 1988: ix). On the one hand, Muslims are often seen by Westerners as "backwards," even "medieval." Their concepts of criminal justice and penology are imagined to be similar to those associated with the Inquisition or witch trials. On the other hand, Muslims are pictured as "radicals" or "terrorists," who take hostages and subject them to summary "revolutionary" trials and punishments.
Indeed, the Western image of "Islamic justice" owes itself largely, perhaps, to the role of one man, the Ayatollah Khomeini. To millions of Americans and other Westerners, the ayatollah and his followers came to embody the "Great Satan." With his black flowing garments and headgear, Khomeini looked to many Westerners like a sinister figure out of their past. He used religious language which most Westerners no longer expect to employ in judicial or other public discourse. His regime was guilty (at least in Western eyes) of widespread human rights abuses.
These abuses were not confined to the security and police forces, but (again in Western eyes) deeply infected the judicial system as well indeed, were integral to them. Western readers were exposed to accounts such as this one, ...