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Headless Body in Legless Story
National Review ^ | 2/18/09 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 02/18/2009 10:25:35 AM PST by pissant

Kathryn, that self-pitying imam is part of a now familiar pattern: Pay no attention to that dead body; the real victim here is Islam.

Beheaded woman in Buffalo? "Shocked friend says murder damages Islam's image."

Hindus, Jews and Christians massacred in Bombay? "The recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India highlight the dangerously vulnerable situation of India’s Muslims."

But enough about all these corpses: Let's talk about me.

Yet we never do. Jonah writes today about the reluctance of journalists (a profession that congratulates itself on its "bravery" and "courage" far more than, say, firemen do) to speak truth to politically correct power — or, as I put it in my testimony in Toronto last week, their willingness to serve as eunuchs to the PC sultans.

Oddly enough, the one story that did decline to take spokesimams at face value came from, of all people, The Toronto Star's reporter:

Aasiya Hassan recently filed for divorce, authorities said. According to Buffalo News reports, she obtained an order of protection on Feb. 6, barring her husband from their home in Orchard Park.

Under sharia law followed by Muslims, a woman can ask for a divorce, but only a man can grant the request, and he can refuse, according to a book on sharia published last month, Cruel and Usual Punishment, by Egyptian-born American author Nonie Darwish.

Under Islamic law, crimes such as apostasy (leaving Islam), adultery, theft or drinking alcohol are punishable by beheading, stoning, amputation of limbs or flogging, the book says.

As a Canadian reader wrote: "Wow. Someone at the Star hasn't been reading the employee handbook."

But that's the point. Spousal murder is not unusual. Beheading your wife is. If Muzzamil Hassan decapitated his as an Islamic ritual, then his entire professional life — Mister Moderate Muslim — was a lie. In other words, it would be the work of moments for even the laziest hack to work up exactly the same "hypocrisy" angle that the press stampede after when some evangelical preacher turns out to have a thing for fetching young rent boys.

As I noted at the weekend, when Mr. Hassan launched his Bridges TV station to counter "negative stereotypes" of Muslims, he got the traditional tongue baths from NBC's Brian Williams, NPR's "All Things Considered" et al - even though the station was entirely unwatched. Don't they have a responsibility to revisit the story now that it's got a little more complicated - or, as old-school editors would say, "newsworthy" - than the press releases they read out a couple of years back?

From The Chicago Tribune, November 30th 2004:

Although many may welcome the channel as a vital voice missing from the mainstream media, scholars say it must transcend a number of obstacles to survive.

John Voll, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, said some audiences might have a hard time accepting Islam and modernity in the same package, which is exactly what the network hopes to demonstrate.

Not as hard a time as Mr. Hassan had reconciling Islam and modernity.

From NBC Nightly News, December 9th 2004:

[REPORTER RON] ALLEN: It's the brainchild of Aasiya Zubair, an architect, and her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, a banker, who are disturbed that negative images of Muslims seem to dominate TV, especially since 9/11.

Ms. AASIYA ZUBAIR: I did not want my kids growing up to watch Muslims being portrayed as terrorists.

No, indeed. Instead, it's their father who turned out to be the terrorist — no different from the London School of Economics-educated British subject behind the beheading of Daniel Pearl.

That's what makes this a story rather than one family's tragedy. If you're not intrigued by the apparent fraud at the heart of this man's life and work — a fraud in which the U.S. media cheerfully colluded — you lack the elementary curiosity necessary to be a journalist.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption
KEYWORDS: bridgestv; honorkilling; islamiclaw; islamonazism; marksteyn; misogyny; religionofpeace; steyn; trop
The incomparable Mr. Steyn...
1 posted on 02/18/2009 10:25:35 AM PST by pissant
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To: pissant
If Muzzamil Hassan decapitated his as an Islamic ritual, then his entire professional life — Mister Moderate Muslim — was a lie.

Spot on. Makes you wonder how many other so-called Islamic "moderates" are out there.

2 posted on 02/18/2009 10:32:18 AM PST by library user (Rod Blagojevich should have been TIME MAGAZINE'S "Person of the Year.")
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To: pissant

Everybody’s got an angle — here Muslims are complaining that the beheader gives Islam a bad name. Next, divorce lawyers will be complaining that Islamic justice deprives them of their livelihood. It’s hard to drag on the proceedings if your client has lost her head.


3 posted on 02/18/2009 10:32:27 AM PST by Pearls Before Swine (Is /sarc really necessary?)
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To: pissant

Spot on as always.


4 posted on 02/18/2009 10:33:38 AM PST by usurper (Spelling or grammatical errors in this post can be attributed to the LA City School System)
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To: pissant

Yet another beheading slaughter ignored by NOW and the LSM (Left Stream Media).

5 posted on 02/18/2009 10:34:21 AM PST by Diogenesis (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
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To: Pearls Before Swine
Next, divorce lawyers will be complaining that Islamic justice deprives them of their livelihood.
It’s hard to drag on the proceedings if your client has lost her head.

Possible new bailout idea for divorce lawyers.

6 posted on 02/18/2009 10:37:01 AM PST by Diogenesis (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
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To: Pearls Before Swine
Moron news folks NBC local were talking sh*t about the cultural differences that led to the beheading.

Personally don't give a rat's @ss what this guy's motive was or what his religious beliefs are...he's a premeditated murderer plain and simple.

7 posted on 02/18/2009 10:47:56 AM PST by xtinct ("There's a sucker born every minute." P.T. Barnum)
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To: xtinct
he's a premeditated murderer plain and simple.

I agree, but the PC DA doesn't seem to. They're only holding him on SECOND degree murder charges.

8 posted on 02/18/2009 11:44:28 AM PST by JohnBovenmyer
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To: Diogenesis

Ya know-I hate to sound so niave but, but,
but these two look so ...like...normal.
Only one word comes to mind-demonic.


9 posted on 02/18/2009 12:11:11 PM PST by murrie (For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son..........)
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To: murrie
Ya know-I hate to sound so niave but, but, but these two look so ...like...normal. Only one word comes to mind-demonic.

Once a feral alley cat woke up my child in his third-floor bedroom of our city house. The cat had got in via the second-story cat door, which means it had to climb about eighteen feet up a block wall and over the deck fence and around a corner into an alcove to find the cat door, and then go up uncarpeted open stairs to the loft bedrooms.

It looked almost identical to our sweet little tabby pet, except all mangy and wild-eyed. I had to lure it with a trail of food down three stories to the front door, and then try with a broom to get it to leave, while it was yowling like a banshee and digging its claws into the screen door and around the door frame, truly not understanding the entire experience of being inside a building and then using the open doorway to go out.

Yet it looked just like our sweet little lap cat. I thought about that all day, the tragedy of animals or people who look just like one another on the outside, but have such poor nurturance on the inside, and are so starved and desperate for the true love of the true God, that they are not fit to be around civilization and are a danger to anyone who tries to negotiate with them.

10 posted on 02/18/2009 2:22:33 PM PST by Albion Wilde ("Praise and worship" is my alternate lifestyle.)
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