There are many reasons why Violence Against Women is possibly the most widespread and intractable human rights violations in human history: It is embedded in social structures; It is part of cultural customs; It is due to gender inequality; It is due to gender-based economic inequality; It is due to patriarchal strictures… the list of factors goes on and on and many have expounded on it.

Yet even while it is so entrenched an issue, many people have problems recognising gender-based violence even when they are come face-to-face with it simply because:

Sisters in Islam acknowledges that the Qur’an has prescribed punishment for the crimes of theft (sariqah), robbery (hirabah), adultery (zina) and slanderous accusation of zina (qazaf). However, Hudud Allah in the Qur’an is a much broader concept, which is neither confined to punishments nor to a legal framework, but provides a comprehensive set of guidelines on moral, legal and religious themes. “The bounds or limits set by God” (2:229)which should not be transgressed, embody all that God orders or forbids, and are not limited to certain punishments as in the Hudud law.

From the report:

"Execution by stoning, a punishment prescribed in Iran’s Penal Code, is a particularly grotesque and horrific practice. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all circumstances and believes that stoning is specifically designed to increase the suffering of victims. Iranian law prescribes that the stones are deliberately chosen to be large enough to cause pain, but not so large as to kill the victim immediately. It is a punishment meted out specifically for adultery by married men and women, an act that is not even a crime in most countries of the world, and the majority of those sentenced to death by stoning are women."