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An honor killing is the murder of a family or clan member by one or more fellow family members, when the murderers (and potentially the wider community) believe the victim to have brought dishonour upon the family, clan, or community, normally by (a) utilizing dress codes unacceptable to certain Islamic people or (b) engaging in certain sexual acts. These killings result from the perception that defense of honour justifies killing a person whose behavior dishonours their clan or family.source.
Prominent Orchard Park man charged with beheading his wife
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.
“He came to the police station at 6:20 p.m. [Thursday] and told us that she was dead,” Orchard Park Police Chief Andrew Benz said late this morning.
Muzzammil Hassan told police that his wife was at his business, Bridges TV, on Thorn Avenue in the village. Officers went to that location and discovered her body.
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.
The killing apparently occurred some time late Thursday afternoon. Detectives still are looking for the murder weapon.
“Obviously, this is the worst form of domestic violence possible,” Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III said today.
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],” Benz said.
Muzzammil Hassan was arraigned before Village Justice Deborah Chimes and sent to the Erie County Holding Center. source.
I guess this wouldn’t help his hope of portraying Muslims in a more positive light?
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Related Reading:
Honour Killing: Stories of Men Who KilledIn Honour Killing, Ayse Onal conducts interviews with men convicted of killing their mothers, sisters, and daughters. The result is a fascinating, revealing, and ultimately tragic account of ruined lives—of both the victims and the murderers.
With an introduction by Joan Smith contextualizing honor killings both in Turkey and elsewhere in Europe and the Middle East.
Ayse Onal is an award-winning journalist who has reported on Turkish politics, organized crime, and conflicts in the Middle East for over two decades. For ten years, she was blacklisted by the Turkish state and could not write or work for the Turkish media until the political embargo was lifted in 2005.
Islam: A Short History (Modern Library Chronicles)No religion in the modern world is as feared and misunderstood as Islam. It haunts the popular imagination as an extreme faith that promotes terrorism, authoritarian government, female oppression, and civil war. In a vital revision of this narrow view of Islam and a distillation of years of thinking and writing about the subject, Karen Armstrong’s short history demonstrates that the world’s fastest-growing faith is a much more complex phenomenon than its modern fundamentalist strain might suggest.
Invitation to a BeheadingLike Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude." an imaginary crime that defies definition. Cincinnatus spends his last days in an absurd jail, where he is visited by chimerical jailers. an executioner who masquerades as a fellow prisoner, and by his in-laws. who lug their furniture with them into his cell. When Cincinnatus is led out to be executed. he simply wills his executioners out of existence: they disappear, along with the whole world they inhabit.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Empires - Islam: Empire of FaithISLAM: EMPIRE OF FAITH, a three-part series, re-creates the spectacular sweep of Islamic power and faith during its first 1,000 years, from Muhammad's birth to the Ottoman Empire under Suleyman the Magnificent. Evocative re-enactments and art, artifacts, and architecture combine with scholarly interviews to recount the rise and glory of Islamic civilization. DVD includes behind-the-scenes look at the making of ISLAM and producer's commentary
