Update March 14th: Beheader pleads not quilty, at Jihad Watch here.
Daniel Pipes, Middle East scholar and anti-jihad fighter, has a column today on the New York State beheading case with a new piece of information. He writes:
A reliable source informs me – and this is breaking news – that the police found Muzzammil repeatedly told his wife that she had no right, under Islamic law, to divorce him. They also quote him stating that Aasiya, because beheaded, cannot reach paradise.
Presumably this is why he beheaded her. After all, what’s the point of killing a wife who dishonors you if she’s going to go right to paradise? And it makes clear why beheading is a favorite method of killing by jihadists. Remember Daniel Pearl, among many others?
I remember as a child hearing once in a great while about kidnappings or gruesome murders and being frightened and haunted by them. I feel somewhat like that now about this case; maybe that’s why I keep writing about it. I never heard of beheading as a child, except in folk tales. Probably the only Muslims in Philadelphia in the 1940s and 1950s were foreign students at the University of Pennsylvania, and I doubt they were adherents of Sharia.
Pipes also brings up the question of whether this is an honor killing or generic domestic violence:
Did Aasiya die in a crime of passion or to reinstate a family’s reputation? Was the violence generic or specifically Muslim? The Islamic Society of North America opts for domestic violence while the National Organization for Women‘s New York State chapter sees an honor killing.
The crime at Bridges TV fits neither model exactly, suggesting we need more information to determine its exact nature. But as the forces of political correctness inevitably bear down to exclude an Islamic dimension to the murder, the motive of family reputation must be kept alive. Enough with the pleasant deceits – time has come to utter hard truths about Bridges TV.
If you want to read more deeply into the issues raised by this case, a previous column by Pipes has many facts about the case, a review of Muslim reactions, and a discussion of honor killings. And an older column, continuously updated, follows the fortunes of Bridges TV, the cable channel the murderer and his wife founded.