The power of forgiveness!

By Eugene Cho

Have you read the story of story of Ameneh Bahrami? If you haven’t, drop whatever you’re doing and read this…and share it.

Whatever word or words one uses, I’m reminded of the word -

beautiful. Ameneh Bahrami is an Iranian woman who demonstrated to the world the power and beauty of Forgiveness and Grace over Retribution and Law.

She had every right (and law) to exact justice and retribution on a man who robbed her of her beauty by hurling acid on her face some years ago and she decided….not to.

An Iranian woman blinded and disfigured by a man who threw acid into her face stood above her attacker Sunday in a hospital operating room as a doctor was about to put several drops of acid in one of his eyes in court-ordered retribution.

The man waited on his knees and wept.

“What do you want to do now?” the doctor asked the 34-year-old woman, whose own face was severely disfigured in the 2004 attack.

“I forgave him, I forgave him,” she responded, asking the doctor to spare him at the last minute in a dramatic scene broadcast on Iran’s state television.

Who amongst us? Who in the world would have blamed her for wanting retribution? Who amongst us?

I certainly wouldn’t have. As I’ve written before, the “throwing of acid” on the faces of women is an action of cruelty, sickness, and  cowardice. And it continues to happen. It contributes to the oldest injustice in human history: the way men treat women.

Don’t believe me? Just take a look at Boston Globe’s “Big Picture” story and photographs about the most dangerous countries for women.

In this case, this man, Majid Movahedi, robbed Ameneh of her physical beauty and altered her life forevermore by hurling acid on her face. But Ameneh has shown the world true beauty.

True beauty indeed. Forgiveness and grace > Hatred and Retribution.

Ameneh’s story reminds me of the quote from Gandhi who once shared:

“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

May we all live with hope, beauty, and courage. I’m thankful for Ameneh. I’m thankful for the stories of others like Curtis Jackson – a homeless man that rescued a down-and-out banker named Sandy (and her kid) from homelessness.

I’m thankful for these stories because they remind us that we are capable of living in the way of Shalom.

You are able. I am able.

Ameneh has shown us. Curtis has shown. Jesus has shown.

“Go and do likewise…” ————————– Eugene Cho

Here’s the full story via USA Today:

An Iranian woman blinded and disfigured by a man who threw acid into her face stood above her attacker Sunday in a hospital operating room as a doctor was about to put several drops of acid in one of his eyes in court-ordered retribution.

The man waited on his knees and wept.

“What do you want to do now?” the doctor asked the 34-year-old woman, whose own face was severely disfigured in the 2004 attack.

“I forgave him, I forgave him,” she responded, asking the doctor to spare him at the last minute in a dramatic scene broadcast on Iran’s state television.

Ameneh Bahrami lost her sight and suffered horrific burns to her face, scalp and body in the attack, carried out by a man who was angered that she refused his marriage proposal.

“It is best to pardon when you are in a position of power,” Bahrami said in explaining her decision Sunday to spare him.

The sobbing man, Majid Movahedi, said Bahrami was “very generous.”

It was a change of heart from around the time when the court handed down the sentence in November 2008. A few months later, Bahrami told a radio station in Spain, where she traveled for medical treatment after the attack, that she was happy with the ruling.

“I am not doing this out of revenge, but rather so that the suffering I went through is not repeated,” she said in that March 2009 interview.

The court ruling had allowed Bahrami to have a doctor pour a few drops of the corrosive chemical in one of Movahedi’s eyes as retribution based on the Islamic law system of “qisas,” or eye-for-an-eye retribution.

Though she was blinded in both eyes, she said in the radio interview that the court ruled she was entitled to blind him in only one eye.

After undergoing treatment in Barcelona, Bahrami initially recovered 40% of the vision in one eye, but she later lost all her sight.

Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi said Movahedi would remain in jail until a court decides on an alternative punishment, according to Iran’s ISNA news agency.

He said Bahrami has sought financial compensation from her attacker for the cost of treating her injuries.

There have been several other acid attacks on women in Iran. Last week, a young woman died after a man poured acid on her face for rejecting his marriage proposal. Her attacker remains at large.

Amnesty International criticized the Iranian law that allows victims of such attacks to deliberately blind the assailants under medical supervision.

In a statement Sunday, the rights group said the practice was a cruel punishment that amounts to torture.

“The Iranian authorities should review the penal code as a matter of urgency to ensure those who cause intentional serious physical harm, like acid attacks, receive an appropriate punishment — but that must never be a penalty which in itself constitutes torture,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.