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Beheading in Buffalo--How “moderate” was Muzzammil Hassan after all?
Frontpagemagazine ^ | 2-19-09 | Robert Spencer

Posted on 02/18/2009 5:55:55 AM PST by SJackson

Beheading in Buffalo  
By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, February 18, 2009

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.

And now comes the clearest, most harrowing indication of all that Bridges TV’s founder was not the moderate he appeared to be, but was rather a man who had imbibed deeply the traditional Islamic understanding that women are possessions of men, to be punished severely when they get out of line. Of course, this singular lesson of the beheading of Aasiya Hassan, who apparently had raised Muzzammil’s ire by filing for divorce, is the one that the mainstream media and the American Muslim community is doing its best to obscure. Immediately after the killing, Khalid J. Qazi of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) chapter of Western New York, declared: “There is no place for domestic violence in our religion — none. Islam would 100 percent condemn it.”

Unfortunately, all too few Muslim men seem to share Qazi’s view. The Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences has determined that over ninety percent of Pakistani wives have been struck, beaten, or abused sexually — for offenses on the order of cooking an unsatisfactory meal. Others were punished for failing to give birth to a male child. Dominating their women by violence is a prerogative Muslim men cling to tenaciously. In Spring 2005, when the East African nation of Chad tried to institute a new family law that would outlaw wife beating, Muslim clerics led resistance to the measure as un-Islamic.

Why do things like this happen?

Because Islamic clerics worldwide have spoken approvingly of wife-beating.

In 2004, an imam in Spain, Mohammed Kamal Mustafa, was found guilty of “inciting violence on the basis of gender” for his book Women in Islam, which discussed the methods and limits of administering “physical punishment” of women.

Muslim men bring this religiously sanctioned violence with them when they immigrate to the West, even to the United States. The prominent American Muslim leader Dr. Muzammil H. Siddiqi, former president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), has said that “in some cases a husband may use some light disciplinary action in order to correct the moral infraction of his wife…The Koran is very clear on this issue.”

In 1984, Sheikh Yousef Qaradhawi, who is one of the most respected and influential Islamic clerics in the world, wrote: “If the husband senses that feelings of disobedience and rebelliousness are rising against him in his wife, he should try his best to rectify her attitude by kind words, gentle persuasion, and reasoning with her. If this is not helpful, he should sleep apart from her, trying to awaken her agreeable feminine nature so that serenity may be restored, and she may respond to him in a harmonious fashion. If this approach fails, it is permissible for him to beat her lightly with his hands, avoiding her face and other sensitive parts.”

Why do they say such things?

Because the permission to beat one’s wife is rooted in the Islamic holy book, the Qur'an, and Islamic tradition.

The Qur’an says: “Men shall take full care of women with the bounties which God has bestowed more abundantly on the former than on the latter, and with what they may spend out of their possessions. And the righteous women are the truly devout ones, who guard the intimacy which God has [ordained to be] guarded. And as for those women whose ill-will you have reason to fear, admonish them [first]; then leave them alone in bed; then beat them…” (4:34)

The Islamic prophet Muhammad was once told that “women have become emboldened towards their husbands,” whereupon he “gave permission to beat them” (Sunan Abu Dawud, book 11, no. 2141). He was unhappy with the women who complained, not with their husbands who beat them.

Muhammad even struck his favorite wife, Aisha. One night, thinking she was asleep, he went out. Aisha surreptitiously followed him. When he found out what she had done, he hit her: “He struck me on the chest which caused me pain, and then said: Did you think that Allah and His Apostle would deal unjustly with you?” (Sahih Muslim, book 4, no. 2127).

Nothing in there about beheading, no. But Khalid J. Qazi was talking about domestic violence.

Why does this matter? Because as long as no one has the courage to call Muslim leaders like Qazi to account for statements like this, and ask them about the clear justifications for domestic violence that do appear in Islamic tradition, what can possibly be done to combat the prevalence of domestic violence in Islamic communities? Ignoring the Islamic justifications for domestic violence harms Muslim women. And ensures that there will be many more Aasiya Hassans, in the United States and around the world.



TOPICS: Editorial; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: beheading; bridgestv; moderateislam; robertspencer
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1 posted on 02/18/2009 5:55:55 AM PST by SJackson
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To: SJackson
How “moderate” was Muzzammil Hassan after all?

By their standards, rather moderate!

Now, stop and think what the Radicals are really like!

2 posted on 02/18/2009 5:58:13 AM PST by MindBender26 (The Hellfire Missile is one of the wonderful ways God shows us he loves American Soldiers & Marines)
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To: MindBender26

THAT is what I was going to say! By Sharia law, very moderate.


3 posted on 02/18/2009 5:59:14 AM PST by NEBO (Where is Al Gore now that it is cool weather everywhere in USA?)
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To: SJackson

Very moderate.


4 posted on 02/18/2009 5:59:23 AM PST by Diogenesis (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
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To: SJackson

I want to see him in prison - because of what awaits him when that sorry sack of sharia s**t bends over.

Heh!


5 posted on 02/18/2009 6:00:06 AM PST by Da Coyote
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To: dennisw; Cachelot; Nix 2; veronica; Catspaw; knighthawk; Alouette; Optimist; weikel; Lent; GregB; ..
Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume

If you'd like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

----------------------------

6 posted on 02/18/2009 6:00:39 AM PST by SJackson (a tax cut is non-targetedÂ…no guaranteeÂ…theyÂ’re free to invest anywhere that they want, J Kerry)
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To: MindBender26

The manner of committing murder was decidedly muzlim.

Unfortunately, the circumstances leading up to it were not atypical of a violent marriage and a scorned spouse. I have no empathy whatsoever for that murderer, but it is not an uncommon story: she filed for divorce on 2/6, obtained a restraining order, and was the victim of domestic abuse previously.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/17/new.york.beheading/index.html?eref=rss_topstories


7 posted on 02/18/2009 6:01:55 AM PST by Canedawg (An acute case of ODS)
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To: SJackson
Muzzammil has helped the muslim cause tremendously.

After all, it was HIS wife and he can do what he wishes with her. It's allah's will that she die a horrible death usually meted out to infidels.

8 posted on 02/18/2009 6:06:29 AM PST by IbJensen (In 2008, Americans foolishly used their freedom to vote for “chains” not “change.”)
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To: SJackson

That sound of crickets chirping is coming from the offices of the NOW Gang.


9 posted on 02/18/2009 6:07:27 AM PST by dfwgator (1996 2006 2008 - Good Things Come in Threes)
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To: MindBender26
How moderate was he?

RE: "By their standards, rather moderate! Now, stop and think what the Radicals are really like!"

That's a good point.

He didn't dismember her (hands, feet, arms, legs), gouge her eyes out, or anything like that while she was still alive. He just subdued her and decapitated her. That's moderate.. compared to radical Muslims.

10 posted on 02/18/2009 6:09:43 AM PST by WilliamofCarmichael (If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)
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To: SJackson

The fault doesn’t lie primarily with Muslims.

It lies with our journalistic culture. CAIR and other radical groups know full well that all they have to do is create a “moderate” straw man. Send out a spokesman, a representative, a member of the community to declare himself a “moderate”. Voila! The media will henceforth seek him out for his opinion when “controversial” issues arise (like the Muhammed cartoons).

The duped journalists never seek any confirmation of his moderate-ness. And, without fail, they overlook every instance in which it turns out their guy was funding terrorists, or taking on 4 wives, or beating his daughter, or beheading his wife. Nor do they ever notice that none of these moderates EVER goes so far as to condemn outrageous Muslim behavior or even 12 guys seeking to blow up airplanes. The journalist gets gobbldeegook speak about “religion of peace” and “moderation” and a scolding about how American better not start race profiling Muslims. And he never notices that none of these guys ever condemns terrorism.


11 posted on 02/18/2009 6:17:02 AM PST by Timeout (The Brits have their royal family. We have our privileged "public servant" class.)
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To: SJackson

Justice is best carried out whenever possible by the intended victim against the criminal.

Muzzammil Hassan now gets to spread Mohammed’s lethal message in one of the American madrasses.


12 posted on 02/18/2009 6:18:00 AM PST by PGalt
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To: SJackson

This still will not penetrate the impenatrable egos of the white liberals.


13 posted on 02/18/2009 6:20:16 AM PST by junta (Not even respectable mainstream conservatives can save liberalism.)
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To: SJackson

What’s the difference between a “moderate” Muslim and a regular Muslim?

The “moderate” Muslim sharpens his blade.


14 posted on 02/18/2009 6:23:29 AM PST by sitetest (If Roe is not overturned, no unborn child will ever be protected in law.)
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To: Canedawg

Had she gotten a restraining order, and a gun, she would be alive today, and he probably would be alive too.

Had a coward like him known she was armed, he would have kept his distance.

If not, he would be dead, so either way, she (and we) would have been better off.


15 posted on 02/18/2009 6:28:44 AM PST by MindBender26 (The Hellfire Missile is one of the wonderful ways God shows us he loves American Soldiers & Marines)
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To: SJackson

I was very curious about why this murder is only second degree, also. Strange, to say the least. The cruelty of the act itself seeming would require first degree, even if it was in the heat of passion.


16 posted on 02/18/2009 6:29:02 AM PST by hockeyfan (Keep the Change!)
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To: junta
...and not even phase N.O.W. members.

Hubby just said, "You know what it will probably take? --Some Hollywood actress to marry a Muslim and have it happen to her--then they MIGHT notice...sad."

17 posted on 02/18/2009 6:30:10 AM PST by NordP (CONSERVATIVE AGAIN IN 2010 ..... Now, is it 2012 yet ???)
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To: Da Coyote

Off with his head....


18 posted on 02/18/2009 6:32:18 AM PST by x_plus_one
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To: hockeyfan
Heat of passion is still the heat of a CRIME!!

"Hate Crimes" also bother me....A CRIME IS A CRIME, and I'm no less of a victim because I don't fit into a minority group.

Sheesh.

19 posted on 02/18/2009 6:32:31 AM PST by NordP (CONSERVATIVE AGAIN IN 2010 ..... Now, is it 2012 yet ???)
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To: x_plus_one

....;-)..... BOTH of them


20 posted on 02/18/2009 6:33:03 AM PST by NordP (CONSERVATIVE AGAIN IN 2010 ..... Now, is it 2012 yet ???)
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