Via Glenn, a less-than-great moment in public relations:
Orchard Park police are investigating a particularly gruesome killing, the beheading of a woman, after her husband — an influential member of the local Muslim community — reported her death to police Thursday.
Police identified the victim as Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37. Detectives have charged her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, with second-degree murder.
Muzzammil Hassan is the founder and chief executive officer of Bridges TV, which he launched in 2004, amid hopes that it would help portray Muslims in a more positive light.
This kind of incident — not uncommon in some circles — demonstrates perfectly why apologists for Islam can’t just spin these problems away with better PR. Islam doesn’t have an image problem, it has serious philosophical shortcomings as practiced by certain fairly numerous groups of people.
While it would be as unfair to conflate all Muslims with this sort of thing as it would be to confuse the practices of Branch Davidians or the mass suicide at Jonestown with wider Christianity, there is definitely a considerable failure here. Muslim leaders might look to the philosophy that arose out of the Christian Enlightenment (natural rights, reason, and individual liberty) to point a way forward to a moral evolution for those regressive segments of their co-religionists that tend to give Islam a black eye — desirable for many reasons, among which the mere perception of others is the least prominent, and the welfare of Muslims themselves paramount.
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You forgot to mention that the guy who allegedly beheaded his wife was the leader of the muslim “Moderates,” publishing a moderate muslim magazine for the last five years and all. If this is the “moderate” we can all see how the mainstream muslims are so bloodthirsty.
You’re making a category error in your argument.
Yes, “in some circles” this is considered appropriate behavior. That circle, however, does not include most Muslims nor does it include most interpretations of Islam. It is restricted to those who place higher value on “honor” than on their religion.
Shariah law does not authorize the decapitation of an adulterer except following a trial. The trial must include either a confession by the participants or the witness of four adult males who saw the actual penetration going on. Vigilante justice is not Islamic.
That’s not “apology”, that’s simply a fact.
I’m sure that being raised in a Muslim environment played some role in this nut’s behavior. I’m even more confident that growing up in a tribal environment, with tribal values like “face” and “honor” played an even bigger role.
Nice try, John. But is anybody buying that excuse ?
No. You see, the problem is that there are always going to be people that are a little nuts, a little evil, easily influenced, or simply take things too far. When your starting point is that “decapitation for adultery is only authorized by a Sharia trial” – something I would point out doesn’t even legally EXIST in the US – how far does one have to stray to authorize decapitation all on their own ?
It doesn’t seem to help that this little cult, err, religion, whatever, seems to hold the greatest attraction for the nuttiest, most evil, simplest minded people.
As an aside, though I’m certainly in favor of weeding out the nuts, the crazies, and the evil among us, how exactly do you go about doing that when someone appears to act in accordance with a strict moral and religious code until that code goes a bit too far and results in a decapitation?
There is no legal answer. That’s the problem. The only recourse is exactly as the original post suggests, an evolution of islam, and I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.
In what way does it seem that way, Deadrody, except in the case of people who are obsessed with this one religion? You know, I’m quite certain that if I took a tour of all the people currently on Death Row in the United States, I would discover that most of them grew up with some sort of Christian background. Baptized as infants at least, possibly having spent some time at Sunday School and such as kids. So what would that prove?
If this guy were not a Muslim, he’d just be a man who turned himself in for burning his ex-girlfriend, and we probably wouldn’t be talking about him. Last year a woman poured a pot of boiling oil on her boyfriend in Detroit. He died within hours, essentially having been deep-fried to death in his bed. You probably didn’t hear about it. Was that because neither of them were Muslims, or what? Would you even care about this case if there were no Muslim connection for you to fret about?
Urk, looks like you guys did get this story, which I just posted up top. Um, I’ll fix this.
Then I’ll cut off my head.
Dean – in what context did that woman pour oil on her boyfriend? Was it in a context that was condoned by her church? Was it even suggested that her (Christian) pastor would possibly condone the pouring of boiling oil?
And if we go to death row, we might very well find that the majority of the inmates were born into the majority religion of the surrounding culture. But let us then inquire into how many have converted to Christianity since their conviction, then into how many converted to Islam after their conviction.
No need to inquire, since we all know the answers to those questions. Like Abu Graib, the question is not so much about what the guards did, but more about how the established authority reacted. In Abu Graib the perpetrators were tried and convicted. When Israeli children are burned alive, the muslim establishment shows public displays of approval and even ecstasy. Huge difference.
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