Anomalous?

Here's a story that came out last month, but which I've just gotten around to commenting on.

*****

Muslim TV exec accused of beheading wife in NY

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. - The crime drips with brutal irony: a woman decapitated, allegedly by her estranged husband, in the offices of the TV network they launched to counter Muslim stereotypes. [I'll bet the tact of this station was that the West just doesn't understand Muslims and Islam, so it's the West that has the problem. It didn't work out too well, did it? The West has your number just fine, Islam.]

Muzzammil "Mo" Hassan is accused of beheading his wife last week, days after she filed for divorce. Authorities have not discussed the role religion or culture might have played [of course not, someone might get offended], but the slaying gave rise to speculation [by those with a brain in their head and stones in their pants] that it was the sort of "honor killing" more common in countries half a world away, including the couple's native Pakistan.

The Hassans lived in the Buffalo suburb of Orchard Park, N.Y., — a well-off Buffalo suburb that hadn't seen a homicide since 1986 — and started Bridges TV there in 2004 with a goal of developing understanding between North America and the Middle East and South Asia. The network, available across the U.S. and Canada, was believed to be the first English-language cable station aimed at the rapidly growing Muslim demographic. [Uh oh.]

Orchard Park Police Chief Andrew Benz said his officers had responded to domestic incidents involving the couple, most recently Feb. 6, the day Mo Hassan was served with the divorce papers and an order of protection. [Yup, nine out of ten murdered wives and girlfriends would agree, if they could, that pieces of paper make poor shields against murderous louts.]

Said Paul Moskal, who became friendly with the couple while he was chief counsel for the FBI in Buffalo, "His personal life kind of betrayed what he tried to portray publicly," Moskal said. [Yeah, just slightly.]

On Feb. 12, Hassan went to a police station and told officers his wife was dead at the TV studio.

"We found her laying in the hallway the offices were off of," Benz said. Aasiya Hassan's head was [conveniently] near her body.

"I don't know if (the method of death) does mean anything," said the chief [a distant relative of inspector Clouseau], who would not discuss what weapon may have been used. "We certainly want to investigate anything that has any kind of merit. It's not a normal thing you would see." [Not here, but in certain other countries it no doubt is quite common, along with the quaint practice of female circumcision.]

Nadia Shahram, who teaches family law and Islam at the University at Buffalo Law School, explained honor killing as a practice still accepted among fanatical ["fanatical"--a word chosen specifically to make it seem to Western minds that ol' Mo and his ilk represent only a small fraction of Muslims, an assertion I find dubious] Muslim men who feel betrayed by their [viewed-as-chattel] wives.

On Feb. 12, Hassan went to a police station and told officers his wife was dead at the TV studio. Orchard Park Police Chief Andrew Benz says Aasiya Hassan's head was found near [conveniently] her body.

Nancy Sanders, the television station's news director for 2 1/2 years, remembers Aasiya Hassan. "She was beautiful, small, delicately built," she said, "while Mo would fill up a door frame. I always thought of him as a gentle giant." [Perhaps his future fellow inmates will too. Yes, just a big teddy bear of a man to be cuddled and rocked to sleep after an old-fashioned prison rape!]

"I just do not feel it was an honor killing," Sanders added. "I think it was domestic abuse that got out of control." [Huh? This guy not only murdered his wife, but then he took the time to perform a highly symbolic and ritualistic act on her corpse. He didn't just mean to kill her, he meant to dishonor her per the barbaric customs of his tribe. Intelligence, apparently, is not a prerequisite to being a news director.]

*****

Cripe! The only thing that surprises me about this item is that it doesn't surprise me.

Take care.
DAL357