Islam on Trial: That’s What the Buffalo Beheading is All About

Maryam Namazie, the Muslim feminist founder of “One Law for All,” a group which opposes Shari’a law has just posted a report, images, and a video of her rally in London HERE.

I especially loved her placards: “End Racism and Cultural Relativism,” “Sharia Law Discriminates Against Women,” “Equal Rights for All,” and “No to Sexual Apartheid.” Judging by the images, the rally and the conference were attended by both men and women, and by Muslims, ex-Muslims, and non-Muslims. I loved the fact that Namazie described the rally as an “anti-racist rally against Sharia and religious-based laws in Britain and elsewhere.” An inspired touch.

Even more, I loved the fact that there was no violence, no threatened violence, and no signs demonizing either America or Israel; absolutely no scapegoats or diversions from the issue at hand…Continue reading on Chesler Chronicles >>

The Left and a Woman’s Severed Head

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…Continue reading on FrontPageMagazine.com >>

A “Cultural” Offense/Defense-But For the Prosecution. Some Thoughts for the Prosecutor of the Buffalo Beheading.

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.

Alas, they are now doing so, loud and clear, in order to make the point that Muzammil Hassan’s “alleged” beheading of his wife, Aasiya Z. Hassan, does not fit the profile of a classical honor killing-and, of course, that Islam has nothing to do with it…Continue reading on Chesler Chronicles >>

Beheadings and Honor Killings

She was an accomplished, professional woman, in her late thirties, a wife, and a mother. But her husband beat her. Terribly, and for a long time. Finally, after much suffering, she worked up the courage to leave him. That’s when, acting on his own, he killed her.

No, I am not talking about Aasiya Z. Hassan in Buffalo. I am talking about the 1999 St. Clairsville, Ohio case of Dr. Lubaina Bhatti Ahmed.

I know: All the major Muslim organizations, and the mainstream media, continually say that these deaths are examples of domestic violence. They say that domestic violence is a plague that afflicts women of all cultures and religions and which has nothing to do with Islam.

Continue reading on Front Page Mag >>

Updated: Beheaded in Buffalo: The Honor Killing of Asiya Z. Hassan (Parts 1 and 2)

PART ONE, 02/16/09 – Beheaded in Buffalo: The Honor Killing of Asiya Z. Hassan

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?

Because this foul murder is very probably an honor killing, a crime which has little to do with western-style domestic violence. Erie County District Attorney Frank A Sedita III has it all wrong. He commented: “Obviously, this is the worst form of domestic violence possible.”

Continue reading on Chesler Chronicles >>

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PART TWO 02/17/09 – Cold, Premeditated, Ritual Murder. The Honor Killing of Aasiya Z. Hassan

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.

Continue reading on Chesler Chronicles >>