On This Day In 2004

Beslan.

[END OF THIS POSTING]

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Update: The Beheading In Buffalo

(Note: Two posts today. Please scroll down)


Quickie link to the AP story: Hassan pleads innocent.



Previous AOW posts about this story here, here, and here.

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Must-Read AP Article About The Beheading In Buffalo

A follow-up to this posting I did on February 13 (hat tip to Raven for the link to the AP article):

Gruesome killing poses another test for US Muslims

Feb 21, 2:27 PM (ET)

By ERIC GORSKI

The crime was so brutal, shocking and rife with the worst possible stereotypes about their faith that some U.S. Muslims thought the initial reports were a hoax.

The harsh reality of what happened in an affluent suburb of Buffalo, N.Y. - the beheading of 37-year-old Aasiya Hassan and arrest of her estranged husband in the killing - is another crucible for American Muslims.

Here was a couple that appeared to be the picture of assimilation and tolerance, co-founders of a television network that aspired to improve the image of Muslims in a post 9-11 world.

Now, as Muzzammil "Mo" Hassan faces second-degree murder charges, those American Muslims who have spoken out are once again explaining that their faith abhors such horrible acts, and they are using the tragedy as a rallying cry against domestic violence.

The killing and its aftermath raise hard questions for Muslims - about gender issues, about distinctions between cultural and religious practices, and about differing interpretations of Islamic texts regarding the treatment of women.

"Muslims don't want to talk about this for good reason," said Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, a Muslim author and activist. "There is so much negativity about Muslims, and it 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 we can transform it."

There is evidence of movement in that direction in the 10 days since the Hassan slaying. In an open letter to American Muslim leaders, Imam Mohamed Hagmagid Ali of Sterling, Va., vice president of the Islamic Society of North America, said "violence against women is real and cannot be ignored."

He urged that imams and community leaders never second-guess a woman in danger, and said women seeking divorces because of physical abuse should not be viewed as bringing shame to their families.

Muslim women's advocates consider the statement significant after years of indifference in a community which has seen only recent progress - for example, the opening of shelters for battered Muslim women in a few major cities.

"This is a horrible tragedy, but it gives us a window," said Abdul-Ghafur, editor of the anthology "Living Islam Out Loud: American Muslim Women Speak.""The next time a woman comes to her imam and says, 'He hit me,' the reply might not be, 'Be patient, sister, is there something you did, sister? Is there something you can do?' The chances are greater the imam will say, 'This is unacceptable.'"

At least nine mosques, imams and Islamic organizations also agreed to denounce domestic violence this week at the behest of a coalition of Muslims that organized on Facebook after Aasiya Hassan's death.

"What you have is a cultural problem our communities have been silent about too long," said Wajahat Ali, a journalist and playwright who helped drive the effort. "What people with an agenda are trying to do is say this is an example of a barbaric religion. This is an example of barbaric misogyny and domestic violence."

At the South Bay Islamic Association in San Jose, Calif., Imam Tahir Anwar said he preached at Friday prayer services about keeping peace in the family and denounced physical and emotional domestic violence.

"I wouldn't say (the problem) is particular to the Muslim community, but to the immigrant community whether you're Muslim or otherwise," Anwar, whose parents are from India, said in an interview. "Women don't speak up about it. It's a taboo that all immigrant communities sort of face."

Of Islam's potential role in the Hassan slaying, Anwar said: "All religions have texts that can be misinterpreted. Good people regardless of faith would never do something like this."

While sermons like Anwar's are encouraging, other Muslim clerics in the U.S. likely preached that Aasiya Hassan could have avoided her fate by being more obedient, said Muqtedar Khan, an associate professor of political science and international relations at the University of Delaware.

"The imam has to be enlightened enough to recognize this violence happens, to not hide in denial or somehow blame it on American culture," said Khan, author of "American Muslims: Bridging Faith and Freedom."

"In order to essentially condemn violence against women, they will have to treat women with greater respect. Unfortunately, the level of enlightenment among imams in North America varies significantly."

Asra Nomani, a Muslim journalist, author and activist from Morgantown, W.Va., challenged Muslims who say the murder has no link to Islamic teachings. While Islam does not sanction domestic violence or murder, a literal reading of a controversial verse in the Quran taught in some mosques can lead to honor killings and murder, she said.

"It's sort of like the typical reaction to terrorism in the community, where people want to say, 'This had nothing to do with Islam,'" Nomani said. "Well, it doesn't have anything to do with your interpretation of Islam that teaches you can't kill innocent people. But terrorism, violence, honor killing - they are all part of ideological problems we have in the community we need to eradicate."

The passage - Chapter 4, Verse 34 - has been widely translated to sanction physical discipline against disobedient wives. There is disagreement about to what degree and whether it's punitive or symbolic.

The verse is cited "all the time" to justify domestic violence, just as people of other faiths cite scriptures to support oppression of women, said Salma Abugideri of the Peaceful Families Project, which offers training and workshops to combat domestic violence in Muslim communities.

"People will use whatever they can to justify their behavior," she said. "It just seems that people outside the Muslim faith just tend to buy that rationalization as true."

There also has been speculation - by the head of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Woman, among others - that the Hassan case involved honor killing, in which a person is slain by a relative who believes the victim has brought shame to the family.

Aasiya Hassan was killed six days after her husband was served with divorce papers and a protective order. Mo Hassan is a native of Pakistan; acquaintances said he was not overtly religious, and his lawyer has said neither religion nor culture played a role in what happened.

Marsha Freeman, director of the International Women's Rights Action Watch at the University of Minnesota, said honor killing is a cultural and not religious phenomenon. She said it's practiced in some Muslim countries but not others and is present in nations with people of other religions.

"I wouldn't go running around talking about honor killings without knowing more," Freeman said.

On Web sites and e-mail lists, many Muslims are rejecting the term.

"Calling it an honor killing, it sort of takes it out of the mainstream conversation and makes it a conversation about those people from over there from those backwards countries," said Abugideri, of the Peaceful Families Project. "In fact, in this country and in mainstream society there are many cases where domestic violence escalates to the point where a woman is killed."

In her posting, Raven made the following observation, which is being overlooked in the mainstream coverage of brutal murder of Aasiya Hassan:

...[T]he religion practiced by Muslims...is the biggest factor in their culture.

I wonder, did Hassan scream "Allahu akbar!" when he was murdering his wife?

Note: I've reproduced the entire AP article because such information has a way of disappearing.

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CBS Covers The Beheading In Buffalo

I hadn't even finished my first cup of coffee this morning when a discussion of this story came onto the television screen, courtesy of CBS Morning News.
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One person interviewed - I believe that she was a supporter of women's rights - stated that using the defense of "cultural differences" will backfire because America doesn't any ideology promoting such violence against women.

A crack in the media's whitewash of Islam? Maybe.

Of course, the story was truncated and didn't address the concerns it should have.

The story of last week's beheading in Buffalo was also covered last night on the NBC Nightly News, though not coming nearly as close to condemning the misogyn of shari'a law and its Islamic origins.

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Buffalo, New York: Beheading

Where is the broadcast media's frenzy over this story?

From the Northeast Intelligence Network:

Beheading in Buffalo - at Muslim TV Station

By Douglas J. Hagmann

13 February 2009: Muzzammil “Mo” HASSAN, the founder and chief executive officer of Bridges TV, a Buffalo, NY based Islamic television Network he helped pioneer in 2004 amid hopes that it would help portray Muslims in a more positive light, reportedly admitted to police that he beheaded his wife at the television station yesterday afternoon.The victim was identified as Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37, who just last month, filed for and received an order of protection against her husband.

According to police, HASSAN walked into the Orchard Park police station shortly after 6:00 PM yesterday and admitted that he murdered his wife earlier in the afternoon. While Erie County, NY District Frank A. Sedita III stated about the murder that “”…this is the worst form of domestic violence possible,” it is more pertinent to understand that the act of beheading in Islam is frequently and closely associated with “honor killings.”

The intentional mainstream media obfuscation of honor killings and the act of beheading as both relate to Islamic fundamentalist practices & beliefs is anticipated, especially in this case. (For a good primer about Islam and honor killings, please read this 2008 article written by Robert Spencer).

HASSAN and Bridges TV of Buffalo has been a focus of investigation by the Northeast Intelligence Network in the past. The Northeast Intelligence Network made several inquiries to HASSAN and Bridges TV about their relationship with al Manar television - inquiries that HASSAN and his station refused to answer.

Meanwhile, HASSAN was charged with second-degree murder and has been arraigned by Orchard Park, NY Village Justice Deborah Chimes. He is currently in custody at the Erie County Holding Center.

According to the Buffalo News:

...Authorities say Aasiya Hassan recently had filed for divorce from her husband.

"She had an order of protection that had him out of the home as of Friday the 6th [of February]," [Orchard Park Police Chief Andrew] Benz said.

Read more about Muzzammil Hassan, who came here to the United States from Pakistan twenty-five years ago, HERE, in an article dated 2004.

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Stop Making Excuses For Terror

Please read this moving and important essay, "Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil: When will our luminaries stop making excuses for terror?" by Judea Pearl, the father of Daniel Pearl, who was beheaded seven years ago on February 1.

Steven Emerson's suggestions for action are below the fold.

Let Bill Moyers know that his purported "evenhandedness" is tantamount to justifying the same terrorism that robbed Daniel Pearl of his life. (email for Moyers below).

Let Jimmy Carter know that his rationalization of Hamas' actions is no different than defending Nazism (email for Carter below).

Let the New York Times know that its inability to tell the difference between Hamas butchery and the State of Israel is the equivalent of saying that Daniel Pearl's executioners were blameless (email for the Times below).

Let the Chancellor of UCLA know that the American public will not support taxpayers' money going to campus-sponsored Hamas hate fests. (email below)

Let the White House, the U.S. Senate and Congress know that the leaders of radical American Islamic groups such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) are not welcome in the White House or Congress and should not be legitimized by the FBI, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security because they refuse to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah by name.

Email addresses to copy and paste into your compose-mail page for those listed above:

Bill Moyers - moyersonpbs@thirteen.org

President Jimmy Carter - carterweb@emory.edu

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block - chancellor@ucla.edu

William Keller, New York Times Executive Editor - executive-editor@nytimes.com

Contact the President: White House contact form - CLICK HERE TO ACCESS

Is it an exercise in futility to contact the above? Maybe. But even so, good citizens make their voices known!

Note: Debbie Schlussel makes these points about Judea Pearl's apparent lack of understanding as to the nature of the ideology behind his son's murder. Agree or disagree with Ms. Schlussel, her commentary is insightful reading, filled with some disturbing facts about Judea Pearl.

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Little Moshe And His Nanny

Note: Please scroll to the footer and stop the music before playing the video below.

From this posting at Yid With Lid:





More details over at Yid With Lid.

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Ten-Year-Old Muslim Girl Demands And Gets A Divorce (Updated: Must Read!)

But she had to financially compensate her husband. And no charges were filed against him.




YouTube link

(Hat-tip to Infidel Bloggers Alliance for the video)

UPDATE showing what happens when a girl tries to seek a divorce under Islamic law (Thanks, Chuck!):

Girl Forced to Marry at Nine Murdered After She Sought Annulment

Saturday , September 06, 2008

A 17-year-old Pakistani girl forced to marry a 45-year-old when she was only nine was reportedly killed by her parents...

The murder has intensified despair among human rights workers in Pakistan over a recent spate of "honor killings," in which two women and three teenage school girls were buried alive in Baluchistan Province because they wanted to marry the men of their choice.

Saira Nusrat Bibi was successfully fighting a legal battle to have her marriage annulled. As she left court in the Punjabi city of Sahiwal, she was surrounded by a group of men reportedly sent by her parents, and shot in front of police...

Weep for Saira Nusrat Bibi and for all the other girl children trapped by the barbarism of shari'a law. Pray that the beautiful child in the video posted above doesn't meet the same end as Saira Nusrat Bibi.

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Defending The Indefensible

Moslems excel at defending barbarism.

From the August 31, 2008 edition of the Washington Post comes this buried item:

PAKISTAN

Honor Killings Defended

A Pakistani lawmaker defended a decision by southwestern tribesmen to bury five women alive because they wanted to choose their own husbands, telling stunned members of Parliament to spare him their outrage.

"These are centuries-old traditions, and I will continue to defend them," Israr Ullah Zehri, who represents Baluchistan province, said Saturday. "Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid."

The women, three of whom were teenagers, were first shot and then thrown into a ditch.

They were still breathing as their bodies were covered with rocks and mud, according to news reports and human rights activists.

Okay, so maybe there are news reports out there in the mainstream media, and maybe human rights activists are outraged.

But the story gets nil coverage on the evening news.

Why is that? Where is the outcry?

Can't you imagine the coverage were such barabarity practiced and defended by Jews or Christians, particularly those in a political position?

Islam: Stuck in the Seventh Century. And Islam will continue to be stuck there as long as the mainstream media ignore such stories and continue the whitewash of Islam.

(Crossposted to THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS)

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Inversionism

Max Publius of Brave News World explains:

Inversionism is a process in which an ideological group finds to its horror it has allied with or even become the "boogyman" it has assailed previously. In full panic mode, rather than reassess its situation, the group attempts to "invert" reality. This phonomena is everywhere these days.

No doubt, regular readers here will be able to cite numerous examples of inversionism.
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In his first posting about inversionism, Max Publius cited this July 13, 2008 article from the Daily Mail:

A BBC drama has triggered a barrage of complaints after it showed gruesome images of a Muslim being beheaded.

Bonekickers, about a group of archeological sleuths, depicted an extremist Christian decapitating a man with a sword.

The bloody scene has prompted 100 complaints since it was broadcast on BBC1 on Tuesday evening.

[...]

The show, watched by 6.8 million, also sparked new claims of anti-Christian bias in BBC programmes.

One viewer wrote on the corporation's website: 'If it had been another religion portrayed in that manner, the PC police would have been up in arms about the nastiness and their rights not to have their religion ridiculed - as it was Christians, it was apparently OK.'

Last fall, in the season opener, the popular CBS television series Cold Case presented a similar case of inversionism. In that episode, a group of Christian high-schoolers stoned a wayward member of group. That's right — a stoning, in a modern American high school in 1998.

Additional reading: World Net Daily has two stories about the above episode of Cold Case, one here and one here.

(Hat-tip to Nanc for the photo here)

Today, in the Twenty-first Century, who is carrying out stonings? Consider the following excerpt from this source:

Stoning is a brutal and outdated practice that is kept alive only by Muslims under Sharia rule. Although it has been practiced since biblical times, every other culture has systematically ceased the practice in favor of more humane forms of punishment. The torturous sentence leaves the victim in agony.

[...]

Typically, a stoning victim is first wrapped in cloth and buried up to the waist for men, or up to the chest for females. Then the crowd is to throw stones at the victim. However, it is very important that, “… no stone should be thrown that should kill with the first or second blow, or so small as a pebble to do no injury to the condemned.” (Hulagu's Web, 64) Stoning is a unique form of punishment in that there is no single executioner. The simplistic act of gathering the victim’s peers around him creates killers out of everyone.

Today, stoning is only practiced in Islamic culture in order to maintain the submission of its women and those in the lower cast.

[...]

Among the countries that still practice stoning are Afghanistan, Iran, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates. Other Islamic countries denounce the practice as inhumane and indicate that the Qur’an provides no grounds for such a vicious practice. Those who practice stoning claim that it is demanded by Islam and have gone so far as incorporating it into their countries penal codes.

Read the rest.

For some time, I've been saying, "I feel as if I'm living in an alternate universe." Max Publius's term, inversionism, however, better expresses the surreality with which we are confronted every day.

As ever, commenters are invited to share their own observations as to various manifestations of inversionism.

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Roasting Children

[Hat-tip to The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler for the first link in this posting]

The following excerpt from one of Michael Yon's reports indicates the kind of enemy the West, indeed all civilized cultures, is facing:

...The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family....

Reminiscent of the ancient Canaanites? Well, some Arabs proudly claim descent from those ancient Canaanites. Genetic testing substantiates that connection:

Genetic research using Y-chromosome haploid analysis has identified a Phoenician genetic marker (a so-to-speak "Canaanite gene") among modern Lebanese populations, including among Maronite Christians and Shiite Muslims, especially near the coast.[17] Initial findings show that the modern Lebanese gene pools comprise indigenous Canaanites, followed by immigration waves from Arabs, Crusader Europeans, and Seljuk Turks. The American University of Beirut launched the Phoenician genographic project to precisely map the genetic makeup of the Lebanese population and even the Mediterranean populations where ancient Canaanites colonized. A high-frequency of the Canaanite gene has even been detected in the Iberian Peninsula as well as in Malta, an island that Phoenicians colonized.

Consider the following, about the god Moloch, which the Canaanites (as well as some other tribes) worshipped:

...[R]eferences to Moloch use mlk only in the context of "passing children through fire lmlk", whatever is meant by lmlk, whether it means "to Moloch" or means something else. It has traditionally been understood to mean burning children alive to the god Moloch.

Only barbarians sacrifice children to fire. And that's what the enemy the civilized world is facing — barbarians, albeit often with modern weaponry and modern technology with which to spread their vile ideology.

[Additional details about the Canaanite religion ]

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