Author: Laina Farhat-Holzman
Publication: Santa Cruz Sentinel
Date: February 28, 2009
URL: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/opinion/ci_11807254
A murder was committed in Orchard Park, a
suburb of Buffalo, N.Y. On Feb. 13 a 44-year-old Muslim businessman, Muzzamil
Hassan, allegedly beheaded his 37-year-old wife, Aasiya Z. Hassan. The local
district attorney said: "This is the worst form of domestic violence
possible."
This was not domestic violence a crime of
passion; rather, it smacks of the all-too-frequent custom in Pakistan, where
Hassan was born, of "honor killing." A wife or daughter whose actions
have shamed the family must be executed -- and decapitation is a favored mode,
which al-Qaida has even justified as sanctioned in the Koran.
Violence toward women is not just an American
phenomenon, but here, it is a crime. In many other places, however, particularly
in many Muslim communities, honor killing is considered acceptable. A family
loses its "honor" if its daughters or wives "misbehave"
by running away, dating, not wanting to marry someone chosen by the family,
imagined or real adultery, and worst of all, demanding a divorce, which Hassan's
wife did.
European governments have problems with honor
killings of daughters in their Muslim immigrant communities. Initially, these
were downplayed as "cultural," but today they are prosecuted. In
the United States, we have had instances of these crimes too -- a recent one
in Texas where a man murdered his two college-age daughters for "dating"
-- and now this beheading.
What makes this Buffalo case so terrible is
that the husband is a
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well-educated businessman who established
an English-language Islamic network to combat alleged anti-Muslim bias in
the American media. The irony is that he was promoting Islamic "family
values."
He is no backward village bumpkin; he was
a former bank vice president who was apparently unimpressed with American
domestic values. That such a man could decapitate his wife in the style that
was used on American reporter Daniel Pearl, or a few weeks ago in Afghanistan
where a kidnapped European was decapitated and his murder filmed, is alarming.
His wife's crime, apparently, was serving
him with a restraining order because he beat her and asking for a divorce.
This somehow "shamed" him and he retreated to one of the most violent
values of his former homeland: a beheading execution to which he felt entitled.
I pity his defense attorney.
Along with all the great benefits of globalization,
horrible ideas also travel. What we should understand is that the daily horrors
of life under the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan do not just stay there;
they come here. We cannot pretend they are none of our business.
Pakistan has made a deal with the Taliban
to end bloody and inconclusive warfare in Swat, in the North West Frontier
to replace Pakistani law with "strict" Islamic law. Swat, which
was recently a tourist haven for skiers and in a recent election voted for
the secular party, has been thrown under the bus by the Pakistan government.
Perhaps the government feels it is a good deal because all that it will cost
is the legalization of Taliban's war on women. But what will Taliban demand
next?
Quite a few American political analysts have
actually suggested that we negotiate with the Taliban ourselves -- and try
to detach them from al-Qaida, whom they consider our real enemy. Yes, indeed;
let's back these heroes, just as we did in fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.
This was a case of considering the Islamist monsters preferable to the Soviet
monsters. We were wrong, and are still paying for it. When will we learn that
the enemy of our enemy is not our friend?
Pakistan has become the spawning ground of
fanatical villains who are influencing young Muslim men living in Europe and
some in the U.S.. It has spawned the "honor killings" of wives and
daughters who only want American or European values of being equal human beings
under the law. Unless severely prosecuted here and in Pakistan, decapitation
may come to your neighborhood too.
- Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer
and author. Contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or globalthink.net.
