 A deep and frightening financial crisis dominates news coverage. A flood of layoffs, tumbling stock prices and a battle over government's role in stemming the tide rightly leads newscasts and the front pages of America's ever-shrinking newspapers. Important stories can get lost in the mix. But sometimes, it seems the stories are ignored due to uncomfortable facts associated with them. Andrew Sullivan, one of the most prolific news junkies in the blogosphere, made that point last week. He expressed dismay at missing the news of the beheading of Buffalo resident Aasiya Hassan Feb 12. Muzzammil Hassan, founder of Bridges Television – a cable network created to enhance the image of Muslims - is charged with killing his wife. "I learned of the case for the first time on Bill Maher, which means the MSM [mainstream media] must have been doing a very good job suppressing it," he wrote. It's just one of several stories about Islamist extremism that has been ignored by U.S. news outlets in the past month. The Israeli military has declared that its investigation has found the number of civilian casualties from its recent fighting in Gaza has been grossly exaggerated. Those inflated figures are helping drive divestment efforts and protests at universities in the U.S. and abroad. Those protests are growing increasingly hostile and threatening. Read more ...Source: IPT NewsMuzzammil Hassan
Latest recipient of The Face of Evil Award
 By Asra Q. Nomani On the night of Feb. 12, 2009, Aasiya Hassan was allegedly murdered and beheaded by her estranged husband, Muzzammil Hassan, inside the building of the American-Muslim TV venture, Bridges Network Inc., they operated together. While the alleged murder took place, the couple’s two children - four-year-old Rania and six-year-old Danyal - were waiting for their mother in a car outside the building, along with Muzzamil Hassan’s 17-year-old son from an earlier marriage, according to people familiar with the details of the case. It isn’t clear where the children were when police discovered their mother’s body, but the account is a reminder that domestic violence often has devastating consequences for children when it goes untreated. Police records - including this report from Flower Mound, Texas - show that the Hassan family had been struggling with Muzzammil Hassan’s abuse long before the alleged murder took place. According to the police report, Muzzammil Hassan "coerced her into a bedroom." In the bedroom, she said, he "pushed her down onto the bed, sat on her chest and pinned her arms and legs down." Read more ...Source: The Daily Beast
By Phyllis Chesler These People Claim That Honor Killings Are The Same As Domestic ViolenceHard on the heels of the Buffalo beheading, the mainstream and feminist media hosted many Islamic clerics, Muslim, Jewish, Christian religious writers, as well as liberal, secular feminists, all of whom insisted that honor killings are no different than domestic violence; that both are crimes; and that honor killings have nothing to do with Islam just as domestic violence has nothing to do with religion. Even so, everyone also said that an anti-Muslim bias (or “Muslim baiting”), controlled the perception of honor killings in general, and saw honor killings even when they did not exist–for example, in the case of the Buffalo beheading. Read more ...Source: Pajamas Media
 By Joe Kaufman Following the recent beheading of Aasiya Zubair Hassan, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) issued what it called “an open letter to the leaders of American Muslim communities.” The letter was a call against domestic violence, which apparently Hassan had been a long time victim of. However, while ISNA was condemning domestic violence and while Hassan was suffering from it, the group was perpetuating the same crime on its website and via the works of its leadership. On Thursday, February 12th, Syed Muzzammil Hassan a.k.a. Mo Steve Hassan arrived at a police station in Orchard Park, New York, where he resided, to report the death of his wife. Aasiya Hassan’s body was found decapitated at Bridges TV, the television network Muzzammil had established at the behest of her in December 2004. Shortly after his contact with the police, Hassan was arrested and charged with his wife’s murder. According to various sources, Aasiya Hassan had endured violent abuse at the hands of her husband for an extended period of time, as had two previous wives of Hassan. The abuse was said to be widely known throughout the Muslim community. Read more ...Source: FrontPage Magazine
By Robert Spencer Muzzammil Hassan allegedly beheaded his wife Aasiya on February 12 in the offices of Bridges TV, the Muslim-oriented cable channel that he founded in 2004 to combat the negative perceptions of Muslims that he claimed were dominating mainstream media coverage. He said at the time the station was founded that Aasiya was his inspiration for founding Bridges TV: “Some derogatory comments were being made about Muslims that offended her. She was seven months pregnant, and she thought she didn’t want her kids growing up in this environment.” The environment that they will grow up in instead cannot be imagined. But many people are doing their best to make sure that, whatever the other features of that environment may be, a critical appraisal of the roots of honor killing in Islamic culture, and a determination to put an end to this phenomenon, will not be among them. Read more ...Source: Human Events
 Will she have died in vain?It is time for imams, leaders, and spokespeople to take the offensive rather than merely the defensive, to go beyond the soundbytes to eradicate the sources of abuse.By Asma T. Uddin For as long as I can remember, when faced with sensationalistic media coverage of terrorism that immediately blames Islam for the acts of Muslims, I have responded confidently that such connections are simplistic and untrue. With the 9/11 attacks, my religious identity became inextricably linked with my spokesperson self, and in recent years, I have found it increasingly difficult to distinguish between the spiritual and the controversial – to find the faith among social commentary. I am sure the same can be said of many of us who are concerned about how Islam is handled by the media and perceived by the American public. In rushing to defend Islam, we often find our connection with Islam somehow reduced to soundbytes; Islam's principles are simplified to convenient factual tidbits. Islam is a religion of peace, jihad is largely about the struggle for inner purification, Islam gave women their rights well before any other civilization did, and so on. Read more ... Source: Alt MuslimMuzzammil Hassan is being charged with 2nd degree murder for beheading of his wife. This is beyond travesty of justice! If honorcide were officially a hate crime, he could have been charged with 1st degree murder.
 Marcia Pappas (podium)By Phyllis Chesler Within hours of the news of Aasiya Z. Hassan's February 12th beheading, allegedly by her husband, Muzzamil Hassan, in Buffalo, American-Muslim organizations and individuals began a dirge bemoaning the existence of domestic violence. But thanks be to Allah, they affirmed, such violence exists among all faiths and ethnicities. Such family violence, they insisted, had nothing to do with Islam. Muslim leaders emphasized that honor killings were "anti-Islamic" or "un-Islamic," a holdover from "pre-Islamic times." They vowed to preach against it in the mosque. All well and good. That Mr. Hassan beheaded his wife--well, that simply wasn't dwelled upon. Muslim religious feminist, Asra Nomani, and Irshad Manjie, both referred to the Buffalo beheading as an "honor killing" and despaired of the silence which still surrounded this form of domestic violence against Muslim girls and women. As Muslim women, they were not as squeamish about condemning violence against Muslim women by Muslim men and by Islamic culture. Zarqa Abid, a soulful-sounding religious Muslim woman claimed that her cousin was once married to this same Hassan, and she denounced Hassan as a "monster." Abid also criticized the Islamic community for having refused to listen to her when she attempted to alert them to Hassan's criminal nature and deeds. Instead, they shunned her and continued to shower him with their money and to honor him. Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, a Muslim author and activist, said that "there is so much negativity about Muslims (this beheading) sort of perpetuates it. The right wing is going to run with it and misuse it. But we've got to shine a light on this issue so that we can transform it." Imam Mohamed Hagmagid Ali, of Sterling, Virginia, vice-president of the Islamic Society of North America, said that "violence against women is real and cannot be ignored." Nevertheless, Muslim organizations are relatively silent about this atrocity, given how vocal they usually are when Islam or Muslims are involved. A Google search of CAIR and beheadings only revealed that CAIR had given the alleged murderer an award." Alright, some Muslims are calling it an honor killing, most are insisting that it is not an honor killing and that it has nothing to do with Islam; some Muslims are admitting that, like other groups, Muslims also have a serious problem with violence against women. Progress, of sorts. What did American feminists have to say? Well, I’m certainly one, and I have been on record a long, long time opposing Islamic gender and religious apartheid, both in Muslim lands and in the West. I write about this subject weekly, often daily. Nonie Darwish, a Muslim-born Palestinian-American feminist, has condemned Sharia law as dangerous to women and other living beings. Now, for the first time, an American non-Muslim feminist has joined us. On February 13, 2009, Marcia Pappas, the President of NOW-New York State, hit the ground running. She was quoted world-wide, even as far away as India. Pappas bravely asserted that the Buffalo beheading was a domestic violence murder that smacked of terrorism and jihad. The February 16, 2009 NOW-New York State press release quoted her as saying: And why is this horrendous story not all over the news? Is a Muslim woman's life not worth a five-minute report? This was, apparently, a terroristic version of "honor killing," a murder rooted in cultural notions about women's subordination to men. Are we now so respectful of the Muslim's religion that we soft-peddle atrocities committed in its name?...What is this deafening silence?
And exactly what do orders of protection do? Was Aasiya desperately waving the order of protection in Muzzamil's face when he slashed at her throat? Was it still clutched in her hand when her head hit the floor? You of the press, please shine a light on this most dreadful of murders. In a bizarre twist of fate it comes out that Muzzamil Hassan is founder of a television network called Bridges TV, whose purpose it was to portray Muslims in a positive light. This is a huge story. Please tell it! Alas, other than Pappas, and the feminists who supported her privately, most feminist leaders either attacked Pappas or remained silent. Read more ...Source: FrontPage MagazineMarcia Pappas
Latest recipient of The MASH Award
 Muzzammil Hassan is being charged with 2nd degree murder for beheading of his wife. This is beyond travesty of justice! If honorcide were officially a hate crime, he could have been charged with 1st degree murder.
By Daniel Pipes On the occasion of its launch in 2004 from near Buffalo, New York, the Muslim television channel "Bridges TV" won the enthusiastic support of Secretary of State Colin Powell's media assistant, Stuart Holliday: "I laud your expression of interest in promoting understanding and tolerance." And so it went; Bridges TV also met with euphoric media coverage, uncritical academic reaction, and blessings from sports giants like Muhammad Ali and Hakeem Olajuwan. From the start, however, Bridges TV amounted to a lie. On the political level, its raison d'être was based on the canard that Muslims in the United States suffer from bias and are victimized. That an idea took formal expression in 2000, when the Senate passed a resolution inveighing against the "discrimination" and "backlash" suffered by the American Muslim community, an insulting falsehood then and now. Read more ...Source: FrontPage Magazine
 By Joshua Rhett Miller
The beheading of 37-year-old Aasiya Hassan has all the markings of an honor killing, psychologists and Islamic experts tell FOXNews.com, as the upstate New York woman's husband awaits a preliminary hearing on murder charges.
Muzzammil Hassan, 44, remains jailed after being charged with the second-degree murder of his wife, whose body was found Thursday at the office of Bridges TV, their television station in Orchard Park, near Buffalo.
Orchard Park Police Chief Andrew Benz said Hassan has not confessed to the crime, despite media reports to the contrary.
"He came in and said his wife was dead," said Benz, who declined to elaborate on the particulars of his conversation with the suspect.
But Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita III left no doubt that he believes Muzzammil Hassan killed his wife. Hassan will appear for a preliminary hearing Wednesday in Orchard Park. If convicted of second-degree murder, he faces up to life in prison.
"He's a pretty vicious and remorseless bastard," Sedita told FOXNews.com Tuesday. "Whether he was motivated by some kind of interpretation of his religious or cultural views, we don't know. We'll look into everything in the case."
Asked if the murder is being probed as an honor killing, Benz replied, "We've been told that there's no place for that kind of action in their faith, but I wouldn't say that there's anything that's being completely ruled out at this point."
But psychologists and some American Muslims said the slaying has all the markings of an honor killing.
"The fierce and gruesome nature of this murder signals it's an honor killing," said Dr. Phyllis Chesler, an author and professor of psychology at the Richmond College of the City University of New York. "What she did was worthy of capital punishment in his eyes."
Following multiple episodes of domestic violence, Aasiya Hassan filed for divorce on Feb. 6 and obtained an order of protection that barred her husband from their home, according to attorney Elizabeth DiPirro, whose law firm, Hogan Willig, represented Aasiya Hassan in the divorce proceeding.
Chesler, who wrote "Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?" for Middle East Quarterly, said some Muslim men consider divorce a dishonor on their family.
"This is not permitted in their culture," said Chesler, whose study analyzed more than 50 reports of honor killings in North America and Europe. "This is, from a cultural point of view, an honor killing."
Chesler said honor killings typically are Muslim-on-Muslim crimes and largely involve teenage daughters, young women and, to a lesser extent, wives.
But Chesler said the "extremely gruesome nature" of the crime closely matches the characteristics of an honor killing.
"Leaving the body parts displayed the way he did, like a terrorist would do, that's very peculiar, it's very public," Chesler said. "He wanted to show that even though his business venture may have been failing, that he was in control of his wife."
Chesler called on U.S. and Canadian immigration authorities to inform potential Muslim immigrants and new Muslim citizens that it's illegal to abuse women in the two countries.
"As long as Islamist advocacy groups continue to obfuscate the problem, and government and police officials accept their inaccurate versions of reality, women will continue to be killed for honor in the West, such murder may even accelerate," Chesler wrote. "Unchecked by Western law, their blood will be on society's hands."
M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder and chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, agreed with Chesler.
"It certainly has all the markings of [an honor killing]," Jasser told FOXNews.com. "She expressed through the legal system that she was being abused, and at the moment she asked for divorce, she's not only murdered — she's decapitated."
Muzzammil and Aasiya Hassan founded Bridges TV in November 2004 to counter anti-Islam stereotypes, touting the network as the "first-ever full-time home for American Muslims," according to a 2004 press release.
Jasser said he was concerned that Aasiya Hassan suffered such a barbaric death after she and her husband were seen as a couple focused on bettering the "Islamic image" in the United States.
"The most dangerous aspect of this case is to simply say it's domestic violence," Jasser told FOXNews.com.
In a 1,300-word statement, Islamic Society of North America Vice President Imam Mohammed Hagmagid Ali said the organization was "shocked and saddened" by the killing.
"This is a wake up call to all of us, that violence against women is real and can not be ignored," the statement read. "It must be addressed collectively by every member of our community."
Ali called on imams and community leaders to take a "strong stand" against domestic violence, and he denounced the link of shame and divorce among Muslims.
"Women who seek divorce from their spouses because of physical abuse should get full support from the community and should not be viewed as someone who has brought shame to herself or her family," the statement continued. "The shame is on the person who committed the act of violence or abuse. Our community needs to take a strong stand against abusive spouses."
Meanwhile, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, a producer and host for Bridges TV who worked alongside the Hassans, said "now is not the time" to debate the cultural and religious context of the murder that appears to be an honor killing inspired by Aasiya Hassan's desire to divorce her husband.
"There will be time for that later," Hirschfield said in a statement obtained by FOXNews.com. "I will only say to those who leap to the conclusion that this kind of thing is intrinsic to Islam, ask yourselves if you think that drunkenness is intrinsic to Irish Catholics, or cheating in business is to Jews?" Source: Fox NewsBrad Hirschfield
Latest recipient of the Retarded Rabbi Award
 By Phyllis Chesler The profile of a classical honor killing is one in which a young girl or young woman in an Islamist household is, from a modern, western, and feminist point of view, kept secluded and subordinate, normatively abused, force-veiled at a young age, and held to a 7th-8th century view of woman’s honor and family honor as practiced in the past and still today among many people in the Muslim Middle East, in the increasingly Arabized Islamic world in Asia, and in Muslim immigrant communities in the West. For the first time, in the wake of the Buffalo beheading, Muslim-American organizations who routinely claim that honor killings have nothing to do with Islam are now saying that a classical honor killing involves the murder of a young girl or woman by multiple family members. It does. I have shown this to be so in my study, just published in Middle East Quarterly HERE. The Muslim organizations are not necessarily admitting that such a killing is related to Islam, but they are admitting that honor killings do exist, separate and apart from western-style domestic violence/femicide. And, to be fair, many individuals and organization leaders are also condemning such murders in grave and heartbroken voices. Read more ...Source: Pajamas MediaH/T: L.A. Muzzammil Hassan
Latest recipient of The Face of Evil Award
 Further details are available on connections between the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, the U.S. government, and an Islamic cable TV station whose founder has been charged in the beheading of his wife. As reported yesterday by the New York Times: A man who founded a Muslim-American television station to help fight Muslim stereotypes is to appear on Wednesday in a suburban Buffalo court on charges that he decapitated his wife last week. The man, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, went to a police station in Orchard Park, N.Y., on Thursday to report that his wife, Aasiya Zubair Hassan, was dead, Chief Andrew Benz said on Tuesday. Mr. Hassan told the police that her body could be found in the nearby office of the television station, Bridges TV. The police later arrested him on charges of second-degree murder, Chief Benz said. According to investigative research posted on GMBDR, in April 2004 national media reported on the start-up of Bridges TV, described as "the first English-language cable television channel aimed at U.S. and Canadian Muslims." Read more ...Source: The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report
News last week that the founder of Bridges Television has been arrested and accused of beheading his wife is prompting renewed focus on domestic violence and honor killings among Muslims. Muzzammil Hassan faces second-degree murder charges in the gruesome death Feb. 12 of his wife Aasiya Hassan. Aasiya had filed for divorce from Muzzammil Hassan and secured a protective order against him just before she was killed. "This was apparently a terroristic version of honor killing, a murder rooted in cultural notions about women's subordination to men," New York State president of the National Organization for Women President Marcia Pappas told the Buffalo News. Read more ...Source: IPT Blog
 The horrific beheading in Buffalo was not a crime of passion or even of temporary insanity. By Phyllis Chesler Was Aasiya Z. Hassan the victim of an honor murder or was this simply a form of domestic violence? Did her husband kill her in an act of spontaneous passion or was her death carefully premeditated? Yesterday, I published my study: “Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?” in Middle East Quarterly. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first such study of its kind. You may read it in full HERE. It will be out in hardcopy at the beginning of March. If we refuse to understand what an honor killing is and how it differs from western-style domestic violence, we will not be able to prosecute honor killers, grant asylum to those in flight from being honor murdered, nor will we be able to educate people against honor killing. Many Muslim-American organizations insist that honor killing is “Un-Islamic.” Yet, many scholars of Islam equally assert that the Qu’ran as well as custom permits grave punishment for “disobedient” women. Read more ... Source: Pajamas Media
By Robert Spencer Last Thursday, a woman named Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37, was founded decapitated in Orchard Park, New York, a village near Buffalo. Her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, was charged, rather oddly, with second-degree murder in the case. But the specter of someone who beheaded his wife being charged only with second-degree murder was the least of the oddities in this case: Aasiya Hassan’s body was found in the offices of the cable channel, Bridges TV. Aasiya Hassan was the inspiration for Bridges TV, and Muzzammil Hassan was its founder. Muzzammil Hassan founded Bridges TV in 2004 to combat the negative perceptions of Muslims that he thought were dominating the mainstream media. According to a Reuters story at the time, Aasiya “came up with the idea in December 2001 while listening to the radio on a road trip.” Muzzammil Hassan explained: “Some derogatory comments were being made about Muslims that offended her. She was seven months pregnant, and she thought she didn’t want her kids growing up in this environment.” Bridges TV originally declared that its intention was to “fuse American culture with the values of Islam in a healthy, family-oriented way.” However, there were indications at the outset that it might not have been as moderate as many assumed. Bridges TV from the beginning had ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case, and Islamicity.com, which retails rabid anti-Semitic literature. In 2006 Arab News reported that Hassan was trying to raise money for the network from Saudi investors. Read more ...Source: FrontPage MagazineMuzzammil Hassan
Latest recipient of The Face of Evil Award
The Vice-President of the Islamic Society of North America, a part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, has written an open letter to the leaders of U.S. Muslim communities in response to the charging of the Chairman of a prominent Islamic cable TV station with the beheading of his wife. The letter, titled “Responding to the killing of Aasiya Hassan,” opens as follows: The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) is saddened and shocked by the news of the loss of one of our respected sisters, Aasiya Hassan whose life was taken violently. To God we belong and to Him we return (Qur’an 2:156). We pray that she find peace in God’s infinite Mercy, and our prayers and sympathies are with sister Aasiya’s family. Our prayers are also with the Muslim community of Buffalo who have been devastated by the loss of their beloved sister and the shocking nature of this incident. Read more ... Source: The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report
Barbaric Islamist cruelty towards women is now in our own backyard. The term "domestic violence" is far too mild.By Phyllis Chesler On February 13, 2009, in Orchard Park, a suburb of Buffalo, 44 year-old Muzzamil Hassan, a prominent Muslim businessman was arrested for having be-headed his wife, 37 year-old Aasiya Z. Hassan. Yes, he beheaded her. Aasiya’s crime? She dared to obtain an order of protection which forced her violent husband out of their home. We are now sadly familiar with some high profile Islamic beheadings of infidels in Muslim lands; Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg, immediately come to mind. Sadly, we are also familiar with the practice of beheading, dismembering, burying alive, and stoning Muslim (and sometimes Christian) women to death in Muslim lands. But this took place in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, in America, Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. What can this mean? Why behead a wife who wanted a divorce and who wanted to live free of daily violence? Why didn’t Hassan just agree to a divorce? Read more ... Source: Pajamas MediaMuzzammil Hassan
Latest recipient of the Distinguished Islamofascist Award
 |
|
|
Copyright Muslims Against Sharia 2008. All rights reserved.
E-mail: info AT ReformIslam.org
|
|
|
Posts
