Preventing Entry Into Paradise

Preventing Entry Into Paradise

I mentioned a few days ago the man who ran a TV station trying to promote a positive image of Muslims, now charged with beheading his wife. When the subject came up over at Volokh Conspiracy, the usual liberals of course argued that this wasn't specific to Islam, and making a big deal of this domestic murder was just stereotyping and bigotry. One very PC sort argued:

Setting that aside, some sources have suggested that the guy wasn't even a particularly devout Muslim. So it's not automatically an honor killing or what have you. I don't think there's enough information to know whether it was a religious thing, a cultural thing, or simply a domestic violence thing. You don't have to be a Muslim to have anger issues.

Another commenter, rather full of the political correctness that was starting to grab hold, observed:

Maybe it was an *accidental* decapitation? I know *I* hate it when that happens.

For that matter, is there any proof she didn't decapitate herself? Eh?

Anyway, more recent news coverage does suggest that, no, the beheading really did have something to do with Islam, and wasn't just domestic violence that got a little carried away. From February 20, 2009 Canada Free Press:

Information obtained exclusively by the Northeast Intelligence Network and Canada Free Press by a source close to the investigation during a telephone interview yesterday provides additional insight into the savage murder of the young and once vibrant Aasiya Zubair (Hassan).

Doug Hagmann, director of the Northeast Intelligence Network and contributor to Canada Free Press, interviewed this police source by telephone, who agreed to speak on the strict condition of anonymity. According to this source, Aasiya Zubair was stabbed multiple times, suffering perhaps as many as three dozen stab wounds with a steak knife in what was described as a “frenzied killing.” She was then beheaded by the same instrument.

Also according to this source, Mr. Hassan told police that because she was beheaded, she would not be permitted entry into paradise, an alleged reference to his Islamic beliefs. “It was all about honor, and the dishonor she [the victim] was bringing upon him and his family,” stated this source. “There was definitely a cultural if not a religious aspect to these incidents,” added this source.

A steak knife? I want you to think long and hard about that. (You probably don't, however.) Can you imagine the effort and time that it would take to behead someone with a steak knife?

The notion of beheading her so that she can't get into Islamic Paradise may seem like a remarkably vicious thing to do--but hardly unknown. A couple of years ago, I posted a review of Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, a powerful memoir of a woman watching Iran's Islamic Revolution--which she had supported--turn into one of the great barbarous tyrannies. She told how one of her students spent time in prison for participating in anti-Revolutionary demonstrations, shortly after Khomeini came to power. Many of the women who were arrested were passed around by the guards to be raped before being executed, so that there could be certainty that they were "dishonored" and therefore unsuitable for Muslim Paradise. Ditto, for the al-Qaeda affiliates in Indonesia that raped and then beheaded Christian schoolgirls there a few years ago, and the rape of little girls at Beslan by Chechnyan terrorists.

There is a misogny in Islamist radicalism that makes "barefoot and pregnant" look positively feminist.