Aasiya Hassan's Beheading an "Honor Killing"?

Well, the hyenas are out in the comments to my most recent post on the beheading of Aasiya Hassan, "Islamist Decapitation and Western Apologists." The intensity of the comments, which are not just analytical remarks, but crude ad hominem attacks, raises the question of why? What's at stake for these people, these nihilists who can see no fundamental distinctions in this crime?

Indeed, Repsac3 has distorted the basic issue out of all proportion, for example, on Mark Steyn's remark that, "If Muzzammil Hassan decapitated his [wife] as an Islamic ritual, then his entire professional life — Mister Moderate Muslim — was a lie." Steyn is not asking "if Hassan's beheading was an Islamic ritual killing"? He's indicating the stakes for allegedly "moderate" Muslims and cultural relativists in how the outcome of this Islamic barbarity is framed. Indeed, as the Buffalo News reports:

While Muslim leaders have urged against applying cultural stereotypes to the crime, advocates for women linked the killing to attitudes in Muslim societies.

“This was apparently a terroristic version of honor killing, a murder rooted in cultural notions about women’s subordination to men,” said Marcia Pappas, New York State president of the National Organization for Women.

She decried the scant national media attention paid to the story, which broke the same day as the commuter plane crash that killed 50 people in Clarence.

While domestic violence affects all cultures, Muslim women find it harder to break the silence about it because of a stigma, she said.

As I reported earlier, and citing Timothy Furnish's, "Beheading in the Name of Islam," Muzzammil Hassan's method of killing is rooted in ancient Muslim culture and tradition. Because Mrs. Hassan had just filed for divorce, the overwhelming likelihood is that Muzzammil would lose face among the Islamic communty's business investors if his wife's independence indicated dishonor to a Muslim man.

According to Phyllis Chesler in her update, "Cold, Premeditated, Ritual Murder. The Honor Killing of Aasiya Z. Hassan. Part Two," Aasiya Hassan's sister has spoken to the fact that Mrs. Hassan had been beaten and bruised over a period of 8 years. This violence is being seen as not simply "domestic violence," but Muslim-generated cultural subordination to the male head of household.

Indeed, think about it? Why beheading? Why did Muzzammil resort to the barbarity of beheading in killing his wife? WHY DIDN'T HE JUST SHOOT HER? That would be "American-style" if this man is so moderate and assimilated. No, this killing is not a case of spontaneous patriarchical rage? This is methodical, premeditated religious ritual. An understanding of this is found only within the context of medieval practice. Muzzammil deliberately chose the method of killing known around the world as THE CRIME OF CHOICE among the most extreme aderents to Islamist barbarity and terrorism. This is jihadi justice and honor in the home. Had Muzzammil indeed been so "moderate," he certainly wouldn't have risked the image of the assimmilated, secular Muslim community he cultivated by adopting a method of killing straight out the 8th century.

As one of the readers at Daniel Pipes' blog notes:

The hard question that needs to be asked here is how a supposedly "moderate" Muslim figure like Muzzammil Hassan ended up committing an act (an apparent honor killing) that represents one of the most barbaric attributes found in Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures.

Aasiya Hassan's independent actions brought dishonor upon the family pride of Muzzammil Hassan. While attorneys for Mr. Hassan reject the portrayal of pride and honor as motives for Mrs. Hassan's murder, some women's advocates remain convinced:

Advocates for women — some of them Muslims — have called for the community to acknowledge religious and cultural traditions that stigmatize divorce and heighten the danger of violence in divorce cases.

**********

UPDATE: Roger Gardner weighs in on this "debate":

Are we seriously going to debate this issue? Have we slipped that far down that slippery slope of multicultural pc nonsense? Have we abandoned all reason, all common sense, merely to show our respect to a bloodthirsty cult that poses as a legitimate religion? Have we learned nothing in all this time? Are we determined to continue our roles as useful idiots? Will we just ignore all that we have learned about the treacherous duplicity of the Muslim world, the evil machinations of its political arms, most noticeably in the recent scandals of that serpent's nest CAIR?

How can we seriously consider such a question? How can we still be this naive, this clueless, as to the nature of the enemy in our midst?

Was it murder? My God! What are we becoming? Are we now going to change our very vocabulary to suit our most recent - and most dangerous - immigrants?

To pose this as an either/or question presumes that there are two possible answers. And to make that preposterous presumption is to denigrate everything we stand for.

Yes, Roger, the leftists denigrate everything we stand for.

Muzzammil Hassan and Islamic Primordial Violence

Yesterday's entry on the beheading of Asiya Hassan in Orchard Park, New York, brought out the representative trolls of the anti-American left. The meme at the comments, following Melissa McEwan at Shakesville, is that Muzzammil Hassan is a "moderate" Muslim and his wife's murder was a routine case of patriarchical domestic violence against women (can there be such a thing?). This refusal to see the genuine and unique brutality in Islamic culture is found in the inherent anti-Americanism on the radical left.

The truth is that Muzzammil Hassan is no "moderate" Muslim after all. Robert Spencer, at FrontPage Magazine, sets the record straight on this medieval killer (via Jihad Watch):

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.

Spencer's essay continues with an explanation of the intrinsic brutality among Muslim men, indicating that primordial violence against women is a central component to "Islamic tradition."

See also, "Beheading in New York Appears to Be Honor Killing, Experts Say."

The Beheading of Aasiya Hassan: Patriarchy-Conferred Privilege?

I just finished my once-per semester lecture on gender-equality (which I deliver to multiple sections), and I'm a little fired up on the topic of discrimination against women at the moment. Plus, I'm reading an extremely fascinating (if somewhat contradictory) scholarly essay on the role of patriarchic systems of dominance in the incidence of interstate wars. (See, "The Heart of the Matter: The Security of Women and the Security of States," available here.)

So, I'm finding great interest (but little sympathy) in Melissa McEwan's essay on the murder of Aasiya Hassan in Orchard Park, New York. Mrs. Hassan was allegedly beheaded by her husband, Muzzamil Hassan, in what appears as a classic case of Islamic ritual murder, a beheading in the fashion of Daniel Pearl's, and an "honor killing" in the fashion of literally thousands of women around the world who have been murdered or who are now at risk of death to this Islamic barbarity. According to Phyllis Chesler, the murder of Mrs. Hassan "is very probably an honor killing, a crime which has little to do with western-style domestic violence."

Well, not according to Ms. McEwan:

Particularly in comment ... threads on posts about this story, there are a lot of jokes about how Hassan sure isn't improving Muslims' reputation by beheading his wife, all predicated, of course, on that most basic foundation of prejudice: The insistence that one member of a group represent the entire group. Certainly, I understand the source of the potential irony, but it's contingent on reducing Hassan to one piece of his identity—his religion—and suggesting that his religion is uniquely (or mostly) responsible for his crime. Which, as it turns out, there are people quite eager to do, too.

The thing is, it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

Now you know the woman who constantly says like a broken record "This shit doesn't happen in a void" isn't about to argue that Hassan was not a product of his environment; I will, however, note that Islam was only one part of his environment. He is also an American resident, which made him the beneficiary of all the patriarchy-conferred privilege inherent to that environment, too. He is a member of a family, which likely granted him a higher status for being male. He is/was a businessperson working in corporate America, which favors and privileges men. Et cetera. In most or all of these overlapping and intersecting environments, violence against women will have been tacitly—and sometimes overtly—condoned via media imagery, advertisements, "jokes," turned blind eyes, public religious admonishments from multiple religions, and possibly intimate example.

So how much sense does it make to blame his religion, exclusively or even primarily?

None.

Which means that anyone who isn't just cynically using the occasion of a woman's gruesome murder by her husband's hand to advance an anti-Islam or anti-religion agenda needs to rethink their argument—because if they really care about the victim at the center of this crime, or any of the millions of women hurt or killed by domestic violence every year, they won't mask the real culprit behind a cheap, and misplaced, shot at a single religion.

The real culprit is undeserved male privilege and the resulting second-class personhood of women.

Folks can see why I'm just not sympathetic to Ms. McEwan's case. You see, there are distinctions between the phenomenon of domestic gender abuse in the United States and the historical subordination of women in Muslin countries, and now in the nations of the West as well where Islamic fundamentalists are increasing their grip.

The U.S. is the international system's leading democracy and few other nations in the history of the world have made as dramatic advances toward civil and poltical rights for women. When I teach this subject in class I'm struck by how agressive the United States has moved to abandon its history of patriarchy and real structures of dominance, and I can certainly understand where continued progress might be expected.

But this isn't the case in Muzzamil Hassan's beheading of his wife. This is not "run-of-the mill" domestic violence, as horrible as such crimes are. Violence against women is never okay. But this is a murder of world-political significance. It illustrates the deeply rooted primordial codes of Islamic culture. "A beheading suggests that the murderer wants to separate his victim’s mind from her body, he does not want to hear what she has to say, he wants her mute, beyond what duct tape can do and he wants her completely severed, disassociated from her ability to flee," as Chesler indicates. Indeed, to read McEwen is revealing of the crass ideological blindness to pure evil in the world today. As a professor who teaches civil rights, and as an advocate for the unlimited advancement of women in politics and society, I'm astounded at the moral bankruptcy of Melissa McEwan and the radical left's cultural relativism.

The logical disjuncture in this kind of thinking among leftists here at home is just too much to fathom sometimes.

Walter James Casper Denounced Claims of Aasiya Hassan's Honor Killing as a 'Fairy Story' in 2009

Muzzammil Hassan was convicted in 2011 of the murder of his wife Aasiya in a ritual honor killing under Islamic Sharia "family justice." See Pamela Geller, "GUILTY! Moderate Muslim Beheader Convicted of Islamic Honor Killing in New York, “Hassan may have been conscious when the defendant started to behead her”."

When I blogged this murder at the time Walter James Casper denounced me as a racist and a bigot for spreading "lies" about Mrs. Hassan's honor killing by beheading. Actually, as is always the case, it's Repsac3 who's lying. He was on Twitter calling me "dishonest Donald" yesterday after I pointed out his extreme political correctness to Renegade Cowboy.

But the fact is, in February 2009, at this blog, dishonest Reppy was unequivocally denouncing any claims of Mrs. Hassan's honor killing as a "fairy story":

There is nothing new in this post... Just more speculation and bigotry repeating the lie that when a Muslim man does it, it must be because of his culture or religion.

This may turn out to be an honor killing... But until you can back your statements about "methodical, premeditated religious ritual" with facts actually from this case, you might just as well be telling a fairy story.

In fact, you are telling a fairy story...

Longtime readers will recall that Walter James Casper III is an epic liar, harasser and leftist stalker who was banned from this blog years ago. Repsac's MO is to attack people as bigots and racists, but when proven wrong --- which is always --- there's never so much as an admission of guilt or an apology for his prejudice --- which is exactly what it is when you preemptively attack people who were right from the beginning. It's leftist, collectivist prejudice and hatred in the defense of murder in the name of Allah.

Repsac is a sick, disgusting and evil man. He's a liar who does demonic work. He supports all the worst enemies of America and Israel, and he'd have you six feet under before admitting that his disgusting "progressive" ideology is the work of raw anti-Americanism and terror-enabling.

More from Phyllis Chesler, "Jury Finds Honor Killer Muzzammil Hassan Guilty, and "Cold, Premeditated, Ritual Murder: The Honor Killing of Aasiya Z. Hassan. Part Two."

RELATED: At the Other McCain, "Portrait of a Stalker Troll: @Repsac3, Also Known as Walter James Casper III."

Islamist Decapitation and Western Apologists

The intensity of the leftist attacks on my coverage of the beheading of Aasiya Hassan was heavier than usual (here and here).

The notion that Aasiya Hassan's husband was not in fact a moderate, and that he murdered his wife according to ancient Muslim culture and tradition, puts the lie to left's claims that Islam is just another religion - culturally equivalent - and that conservatives are "racist" by identifying Muslims as a clear and present danger to national security on the basis of their beliefs. This backlash illustrates anti-Americanism through and through, and the left's pushback on this story just makes the entire case that much more significant for the debate over creeping Islamization of the West.

Mark Stein, among the best of commentators on the issue, notes that the American press has refused to cover this story accurately, and only one Canadian reporter was willing to break from the mass-media's standard story line (see the Toronto Star, "Man charged in Beheading").

Steyn cuts to the key issue in this debate on Muzzammil Hassan's Islamic "moderation" and the left's claim that this was patriarchic domestic violence:

Spousal murder is not unusual. Beheading your wife is. If Muzzammil Hassan decapitated his as an Islamic ritual, then his entire professional life — Mister Moderate Muslim — was a lie.

I'm reading right now Timothy Furnish at the Middle East Quarterly, "Beheading in the Name of Islam," where he notes that "Islam is the only major world religion today that is cited by both state and non-state actors to legitimize beheadings."

Knowing this, it's simply impossible to take people like Melissa McEwan or Repsac3 seriously. These are the left's useful idiots of Islamic terror.

Indeed, when we watch an actual Islamic ritual beheading, the notion of comparing Asiya Hassan to case of "routine" domestic violence against women in the U.S. seems frankly evil.

See, for example, "Valentines Day Al Shabab Style (Beheading)," at Jawa Report - and be hereby notified:

EXTREME CONTENT WARNING. DO NOT WATCH THIS VIDEO ON A FULL STOMACH. NOT FOR THE EASILY UPSET!!!

Note: The beheading is reported as originally taking place last October. See, Jihad Watch, "Muslims Behead Christian Convert From Islam in Somalia."

Also, "Somalia: Christian Aid Worker Beheaded for Converting From Islam," and "Brutal Terror Group Seeks Power in Somalia."

Bizarre Denialism on Aasiya Hassan Honor Killing

Here's Daniel Pipes discussing the honor killing of Aasiya Hassan at the Jerusalem Post:

A GREAT BATTLE looms ahead on how to interpret this crime, whether as domestic violence or honor killing. Supna Zaidi of Islamist Watch defines the latter as "the murder of a girl or woman who has allegedly committed an act that has shamed and embarrassed her family." Deeply alien to Westerners, this motive has paramount importance in traditional Muslim life.

Brigitte Gabriel, who appeared on last weekend's Real Time with Bill Maher, has no doubts on the correct interpretation, "here's a guy who did it in the name of honor" (at about 3 minutes):

But as Pipes notes, the forces of political correctness are "bearing down" to deny "an Islamic dimension to the murder" (here and here, for example).

With that in mind, I have to admit considerable surprise at Andrew Sullivan's comments on the left's denialism surrounding Mrs. Hassan's beheading:

Attempts to deny any connection between this kind of behavior and the brutal misogyny of much Islamic culture seem bizarre to me. Obviously, the abuse of women is no community's or religion's exclusive sin ... But the cultural and religious norms that facilitate brutal and often violent patriarchy in Islam make it easier for men to abuse and harder for women to resist.

Of course, Sullivan's opinions are subject to revision at anytime, but the fact the left's most important contemporary blogger (and Sullivan's now a confirmed leftist) is making no bones about the inherent Islamic roots of this beheading will no doubt cause fits to nihilist denialists everywhere.

See also, "Moderate Beheading, " at FrontPage Magazine, where Abul Kasem notes:

According to Islam, if a woman disobeys her husband she is disgraced. Therefore, when Aasiya Zubair, the wife of Hassan, resorted to the Western justice system to seek protection from her menacing husband, she had certainly broken the Islamic tenet of complete surrender to the wishes of her husband. Thus, she had dishonoured her husband, his reputation and, most importantly, the Islamic code of conduct for an obedient wife. Therefore, it is not surprising that the killer had to end her life Islamically, to restore his pride, honor and religious conviction.

Kasem cites Koranic scripture, but no doubt crazed lefties will dig down deeper to the wallow of moral confusion.

Islamic Radicalization and the West

I received a pointed e-mail this morning from a hostile reader, Maysoon Zayid, with the subject heading, "Racist":

Scott Peterson beheaded his wife ... was he Muslim? No! This is a case of pure domestic violence. It's a male issue, not Muslim ...

So continues the intense pushback against the possibility that the murder of Aasiya Hassan was not an "honor killing." Even Kamran Pasha, the Muslim author of a Huffington Post essay on the topic, weighed in at the comments, emphatically claiming, "'Honor killings' - the murder of an innocent woman to avenge some sense of 'personal honor' - are not part of Islam's true teachings or Prophet Muhammad's life example."

Well, on top of this, it turns out we have more news suggesting that the American Muslim community's campaign is escalating against the "honor killing" meme. As the New York Times reports this morning:

At 4:30 p.m. today at The Islamic Society of Niagara Frontier in Amherst, N.Y., the president of the Islamic Society of North America, Ingrid Mattson, and Salma Elkadi Abugideiri, the author of the book “Garments for One Another: Ending Domestic Violence in Muslim Families,” will be facilitating a discussion “in memory” of Ms. Hassan.

The Muslim-American community in Buffalo and around the United States has reacted with outrage over suggestions that this was a religiously motivated killing, an “honor killing” brought on by the shame of Mr. Hassan’s wife seeking a divorce.

Why is the public discussion so heated on this one killing? Most of the media coverage so far has been local to Buffalo, with the exception of some reporting on Fox News - and there's a clue. The left-wing media, in tandem with the Islamic community, wants to quickly quash "honor killing" talk. Should that meme gain a credible foothold in the national discussion, the notion that Muzzammil Hassan was a "moderate" Muslim would be obliterated, and of course conservative cultural arguments in the larger war-on-terror narrative would be all the more compelling. In other words, we're witnessing a high-stakes media framing-battle of epic cultural and political proportions.

Notice, for example, in Mark Steyn's essay this morning, how Britain has capitulated to the forces of pro-Islamist political correctness. Steyn suggests that the Muslim extremists have migrated from Pakistan to London:

Among the growing population of Yorkshire Pakistanis is a fellow called Lord Ahmed, a Muslim member of Parliament. He threatened "to bring a force of 10,000 Muslims to lay siege to the House of Lords" if it went ahead with an event at which the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders would have introduced a screening of his controversial film "Fitna."

Britain's Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, reacted to this by declaring Wilders persona non grata and having him arrested and returned to the Netherlands.

Smith is best known for an inspired change of terminology: last year she announced that henceforth Muslim terrorism (an unhelpful phrase) would be reclassified as "anti-Islamic activity." Seriously. The logic being that Muslims blowing stuff up tends not to do much for Islam's reputation – i.e., it's an "anti-Islamic activity" in the same sense that Pearl Harbor was an anti-Japanese activity.

Steyn continues by noting that the greatest population growth in many of the world's Western nations is found in the Muslim communities:

Along with the demographic growth has come radicalization: It's not just that there are more Muslims, but that, within that growing population, moderate Islam is on the decline – in Singapore, in the Balkans, in northern England – and radicalized, Arabized, Wahhabized Islam is on the rise. So we have degrees of accommodation: surrender in Islamabad, appeasement in London, acceptance in Toronto and Buffalo.

Yep, accomodate, or you'll be branded as "racist" for even entertaining the concept that Muzzammil Hassan's alleged beheading of his wife is a classic case of Muslim honor killing.

And note as well Steyn's inclusion of Buffalo, New York, in the listing of Western cities lying down for Islamic radicals.

Despite signs of accommodation in New York to the Islamic interest coalition today, the debate over Mrs. Hassan's murder continues. Phyllis Chesler has a new piece on the question, "Beheadings and Honor Killings," and she points to an essay from World Net Daily, "Beheader Hubby Was Hero to U.S. Muslim Activists," which notes:

According to a Council on Foreign Relations report, David Powers, a professor of Islamic law and history at Cornell University, explained that the Quran permits men to use physical force against disobedient wives in some circumstances. A woman may ask for divorce, but only a man can grant her request.

"Classical Shariah lays out very limited conditions under which a woman can divorce a man – he must be infertile at the time of marriage; insane; or have leprosy or another contagious skin disease," the CFR report states.

Indeed, as scholar Timothy Furnish has written, the practice of Islamic decapitation "has both Qur'anic and historical sanction. It is not the product of a fabricated tradition."

Considering how hard the Muslim lobby is pushing back on this, it remains to be seen if the left's disinformation campaign against this scholarly consensus carries the day.

Indeed, new cries of "racism" and "bigotry" are already being hurled.

Bwahaha! Lying Hate-Troll Now Says He Claimed Aasiya Hassan Murder Would Be Honor Killing All Along!

When all you've got are lies and allegations of "racism," naturally all you can do is respond desperately with more lies and pathetic allegations.

For quoting his very own unequivocal words, "In fact, you are telling a fairy story...," Walter James Casper calls me a liar and claims that he said Mrs. Hassan's murder by beheading would be an honor killing all along.

The very quote that that blog uses to indict me proves that the blogger is lying. See for yourself: @StopHonourKill pic.twitter.com/svCHue8fvG
— W. James Casper (@repsac3) September 16, 2014

Denouncing any claims of Mrs. Hassan's honor killing as a "fairy story?" or saying it could turn out to be one? pic.twitter.com/FPopQcH2GZ
— W. James Casper (@repsac3) September 16, 2014

Now that's dishonesty.

The remark that "In fact, you are telling a fairy story..." is a stand-alone statement. Hate-troll Repsac's comment about "This may turn out to be an honor killing" was a throwaway line, a rhetorical sop. After denouncing me, claiming "you might just as well be telling a fairy story," Repsac can't be more clear: He's completely unequivocal with this statement, "In fact, you are telling a fairy story..."

When you state a fact there's no wiggle room. He denounced me and those who I cited at the blog as bigots and racists for spreading allegedly false "hatred" to smear Mo Hassan as some stereotypical Muslim.

Well, here's a harsh fact: Mo Hassan beheaded his wife in a ritual Islamic slaughter, a religious honor killing, and he was convicted at trial, and experts were proved right from the beginning.

Pathetic little Repsac's still playing the same old games he always does. He denies his own words, which are there for everyone to see. It's the old, "I'll let readers judge for themselves" ploy, attempting to cast doubt on the fact that lying Walter James Capser is indeed a liar.

What a dirtball, sleezebag and loser.

Typical, that's for sure.

Leftist Denialism on Islamic Beheadings

Phyllis Chesler updates her coverage of the Aasiya Hassan honor killing, "What’s Behind The Enormous Denial That Beheadings Are Related To Islam?"

The conclusion pretty much lays it out:

I wonder if the extraordinary rush to proclaim the beheading of Aasiya Z. Hassan as having nothing to do with an honor killing or with Islam might be due to one other factor. Dr. Nancy H. Kobrin suggests that:

“The Muslim who engages in an honor killing clearly reveals that he has not integrated into the West. We know that there are immigrant Muslim communities in Europe who have not integrated, they exist as ‘parallel’ communities. We also know that, according to the study released by The Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion in the UK, that there is an overlay with where you find terrorist behavior.”

In other words: Wherever there are parallel Islamic communities you will probably find terrorists breeding plots against the West–look for them wherever women are being harshly treated, rendered subordinate, in a fundamentalist kind of way.

Parallel communities, parallel mentalities. The Muslim communities in Europe no longer pretend to be part of Europe. It is overwhelmingly clear that they are “parallel” communities. The much smaller Muslim population in America also exists in parallel communities in certain sections of certain cities in the America. But their many spokespeople pretend that Dallas, Dearborn, Jersey City, St. Paul-Minneapolis and areas in California are really, truly, Americanized populations.

Many Muslim and ex-Muslim individuals are truly assimilated westerners; many have fled Islamist ways and have taken shelter with and assumed sophisticated, transnational, urban identities. And yet: When an apparently Islamic barbarity, like the beheading of a wife, takes place in America, there is an immediate fear that America, like Europe, might also be harboring “parallel communities.”

Hence there is a rush to deny that this might be so.

I understand. Americans do not want to behave in “racist” ways, nor do they want to “profile” anyone, especially a Muslim, especially because so many Muslims have been funding terrorism against America, Israel, and Europe. We are better than that. We believe that a person must be considered innocent until proven guilty; that each person must be judged on a case-by-case basis and never judged in terms of their cultural, political, or religious beliefs. To our credit, we believe in the right to a fair trial.

This approach is indeed commendable, but perhaps dangerous, in times of war, and when terrorists are plotting to destroy us.

See also, Dawn Permutter, "Mujahideen Desecration: Beheadings, Mutilation & Muslim Iconoclasm."

Kamran Pasha: "The Greatest Tragedy of Islam"

Kamran Pasha, a Hollywood filmmaker, novelist and Pakistani-born Muslim, argues that for all of Islam's progressive teachings on the equality of women, the blood ritual of honor killings are the "greatest tragedy of Islam" (via Memeorandum):

As one of the first Muslims to succeed as a writer in Hollywood, I have been interviewed several times on BridgesTV and was delighted by the professionalism and media savvy of its staff. I had never met the Hassans, but I had been proud of their accomplishments. They were bringing an Islam of love, compassion and human brotherhood to the world, while countering the horrific images of violence and misogyny that had tainted how my fellow Americans saw my faith. The Hassans were people I admired - educated professionals and patriotic Americans with a commitment to family and community.

And then I heard how Aasiya Hassan died and I wanted to throw up ....

The greatest tragedy for me as a Muslim is that my faith is associated with such horrific actions that run counter to everything that Prophet Muhammad stood for. To those who know little about Islamic history, it may sound laughable to assert that Islam began as a proto-feminist movement. But it's true. Perhaps the way out of this madness for the Muslim community is to look back at the life of Prophet Muhammad and remember his true legacy as a visionary champion of women's rights ....

So if all this is true, where does this idea of "honor killing" come from in the Muslim world? Unfortunately, it is one of the ugly elements of pre-Islamic Arabian culture that continues to reassert itself, despite the Prophet's efforts to eradicate the practice. In fact, Prophet Muhammad nearly lost his own beloved wife to the madness of the crowds screaming about "sexual honor" ... The greatest tragedy of Islam is that some Muslim men continue to uphold these pagan practices that the Prophet outlawed 1,400 years ago ....

The choice that stands before Muslim men is stark. Do we follow ancient and evil practices, creating a cycle of violence and grief, and use culture as an excuse for our sins? Or do we follow our Prophet and create a better world where men and women treat each other with dignity and love? Do we turn life on this Earth into Hell, or into Paradise? The answer will reveal whether we are Muslims, people who have surrendered themselves to the true God of mercy and compassion, or idolaters, people who fashion God according to their own self-serving desires.

Be sure to read the whole post, "Honor Killing" and Islam."

Kamran Pasha sounds like a reasonable man who would fit the definition of an Islamic "moderate." Here he offers a very balanced take on the Muslim faith and laments how medieval traditions - seen in Muzzammil Hassan's beheading of his wife in a religious ritual killing - indeed represents the worst atrocities inherent to the Muslim faith.

As readers know, common sense and reasonable familiarity with Islamic teaching and culture indicate that cases like this are not "isolated" simply because they are few in number. Such horror is a function of lingering primordial passions, as I've shown here, here, and here.

Once again, Repsac3 has attempted to demonize and discredit as racist fearmongers those who would shout from the rooftops the truth about Islamic depravity. We need less of these enabling left-wing apologists for Islamic violence and more of the genuine "reformers" of the faith so that right and good will prevail against the forces of barbarity and evil.

**********

UPDATE: Kamran Pasha has responded to this post, here:

I am NOT saying that such horrific acts as "honor killings" are Islamic. The whole point of my piece is that they are un-Islamic and were rejected by Prophet Muhammad, who attempted to end these brutal PAGAN PRE-ISLAMIC practices.

My response is here.

Phyllis Chesler: Voice of Moral Clarity

Phyllis Chesler placed me on her e-mail list sometime after I blogged about the honor killing of Aasiya Hassan. I'm glad she did. Dr. Chesler, a professor emerita of psychology and women's studies, and a contributor at Pajamas Media, is a voice of reason and moral clarity in a world where right and wrong seems to evaporated from the culture.

It turns out that Dr. Chesler has been attacked mercilessly in a series of e-mails from the followers of Norman Finkelstein. See the whole post, "My Norman Finkelstein Problem—And Ours."

I'll just share one of the attacks on Dr. Chesler here:

Dear Dr. Chesler, I’ve just finished reading your article entitled ‘Our Eternal Struggle’ written for the Jewish Press, and I felt compelled to write you. I have to ask you, in all seriousness: do you genuinely believe this hysterical, vacuous drivel you’ve discharged upon we the already steeped-in-bullshit reading public? Do you genuinely believe in this absurd and unjustifiable conflation of legitimate (and legally supported) criticism of Israel’s post-1967 occupation, warmongering, war crimes, rejectionism, torture, settlement expansion, house demolitions, imprisonment of civilians without trial, slaughter of innocent men, women and children (please show me the evidence from any respected, independent Human Rights organisation’s records to support the claim that Palestinian militants routinely use innocent civilians as human shields); with this old, recycled “New Anti-semitism”? Are you not even a little tempted to entertain the overwhelmingly more credible hypothesis that whatever little new anti-Jewish feeling that does exist can adequately be accounted for by Israel’s very real, very consistent and very gross violations of basic human rights in the eyes of the world? Do you feel at all guilty for damaging, albeit in a very tiny but still notably insidious way, the prospects of achieving a just and lasting peace for both sides to the conflict in the form of a two state settlement in accord with UN Resolution 242 and International Law? I mean, surely this MUST bother you in some small way. Do you suffer from nervous ticks at all? From the trademark Dershowitz facial spasm, perhaps? Guilt must manifest somewhere, surely? Assuming, of course, you’re not a hopeless sociopath.

Your genuinely concerned “new anti-semite” (I can safely assume my preceding remarks more than qualify me as a worthy target for this particular piece of ideological excrement?),

Hugo Newman.

p.s. Shame on you.

Hugo Newman, hugonewman@gmail.com

This is not out of the ordinary for those on the contemporary left.

There are a couple of more letters attacking Phyllis at the link.

According to Repsac3, Accusing Any Muslim of Honor Killing, No Matter the Circumstances, Makes You Guilty of 'Bigotry'

Honor killings are by definition murders committed by Muslim fathers or husbands against their daughters or their wives. So, if a Muslim man beheads --- beheads! --- his wife after alleging that the wife had disrespected and dishonored him, as in the case of Mo Hassan, who murdered his wife Aasiya, then that person has committed a classic honor killing.

It's not hard. Or, it's not hard as long as you don't have an Islamo-enabling agenda in which you attack people as racist for identifying the obvious.

That is ideological hatred, and it's lies and dishonesty, which perfectly explains Walter James Casper when he tweets such malignantly stupid leftist codswallop:

Making an accusation just because the murderer (& his victim) are Muslim & the victim is a member of his family is bigotry. @StopHonourKill

— W. James Casper (@repsac3) September 17, 2014

Repsac's not only a liar, he's literally mentally deranged. By his logic no one could ever call out a Muslim murderer for honor killing without being attacked as a bigot and a racist. And so, poof!, by Repsac's logic, the crime of honor killing would simply disappear! Of course, that's why fanatical terror-enablers like Repsac (and CAIR) cry "bigotry!" until the end of days. Note that following the logic further makes Repsac an accomplice to Islamic murder, which certainly fits, because progressive ideology is all about coercion, violence and death.

"Bigot" (like "racism") is a term that has been drained of all meaning. It's simply a bludgeon used by leftists --- who've already lost the debate --- to silence their political enemies.

In 2009 Walter James Casper was wrong from the start. Those who he attacked as racist then --- and who he continues to falsely attack today for "bigotry" --- were right all along.

This pattern of progressive deception and lies is why Repsac was banned from this blog. He's an evil man, a genuine and proven racist and bigot himself, ideologically deranged, and burning with cancerous hatred.

A sad spectacle all around.