He needed psychiatric help before he threw acid on her face. He burned that bridge once he disfigured her.

Could it maybe be a cultural thing?

Ideally he would have, yes. But I guess you can only tell with hindsight in cases like these. Still, this man sounds incredibly dangerous and he needs help so that he poses less of a threat to people.

I hope not. If that's cultural based justice then their culture needs to start evolving.

I was talking about his attitude and the reason for his actions. Couldn't it be based on how men are culturally conditioned to see women as objects, that they can own, and do whatever they like with.

The punishment he's recieving is definately cultural based justice, isn't that obvious?

Ah, now I get you. I thought that because I was talking about how he should be dealt with by the justice system, you were also talking about that. In that case, it's still sociopathic if men can think that they have some cultural right to treat women in this way. If he was in a western country where women are equals, his behaviour would probably be defined as sociopathic anyway. (Gah! Curse my western bias!)

Also, it's obvious that this punishment is cultural in that it was given by a court operating under Sharia law. But this punishment in particular is unusual enough that news of it made it here to the west, so I thought maybe this punishment was way outside of the norm (i.e. not practised traditionally).

Update: the sentence has been postponed

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15076184,00.html

Western bias indeed. Truth is that it's often for behaviours that are viewed as negative by society to be tagged as "mental illness" (homosexuality is a great example, and narcisism is probably even a better one - yes, it was considered a a mental disorder not too long ago). Now this man's actions aren't tolerated even within his native culture, but it could be that cultural his cultural indictrination regarding gender roles have determined him to beleive that acting like this is justifiable.

As for your second paraghraph, well I'm quite sure poeple don't go throwing acid in eachother's faces everday, so it's probably not common that they apply such punishment. The whole point is that they DO apply such punishment and certain situations, and that's the outrageous part that warrants attention.

So he doesn't pose less of a threat to people when he is blind?

I know that it's probably influenced by culture that this man probably think he can behave this way, but ultimately his behaviour is not tolerated. 

...

I was speaking in a more general sense. If he had cut her legs off and as a punishment his legs were cut off, that kind of punishment would still raise the same attention for the same reasons. And yes, that they have applied this punishment is the outrageous part.