Authorities Believe Religious Differences Played Role in Slaying of California Father, Daughter

great...i've seen tons of these stories coming from the uk & wondered how long before we'd see these reports (come to light).

and of course, since they OBJECTED as hindus he has a right to kill them.

yeah, riiiight.

Muslim male to marry non-Muslim female, perfectly acceptable and even encouraged in Islam. Less resistence to the will of Allah that way. The other way around...haram...not acceptable.

Muslim male, insulted by the slight, takes to murderous agression, justified in his mind as a defense of the ever-expanding sphere of influence of Islam, perfectly acceptable.

People willing to admit that and call it out for what it is...very few.

i know...so, when are the non-muzlims going to start killing for the same slight????

The parents & sister did the sensible thing by stopping Shayona Dhanak from dating Murtaza. Too bad they had to pay with their lives (although the mother is recovering)

This guy would be a threat to the surviving Dhanaks, and therefore deserves to be executed ASAP. Don't allow him to return to Bangladesh particularly if the Dhanaks too happen to be from there - or else, the threat to their family will continue.

Just fast track him ahead of Scott Peterson.

One more thing - they should try him under hate crime laws. Yeah, I'm normally opposed to hate crime laws, but there is no more appropriate group than Mohammedans who should be tried under this.

Islam is hate...

Mama don't let your babies grow up to date Muslims
Don't let 'em pick guitars and drive them old trucks
Make 'em be doctors and lawyers and such
Mama don't let your babies grow up to date Muslims
They'll never stay home and they're always alone
looking for someone to kill.
Muslims ain't easy to love and they're harder to hold
And they'd rather give you a beating then diamonds or gold
ak 47s and old black burkas are brought for you
And if you don't understand him and he don't die a marytr
He'll probably just get a new bride
Mama don't let your babies grow up to date Muslims
Don't let 'em pick guitars and drive them old trucks
Make 'em be doctors and lawyers and such
Mama don't let your babies grow up to date Muslims
They'll never stay home and they're always alone
looking for someone to kill.
Muslims like firing rpgs and finger pointing clerics
numerous handgrenades and children and girls of the night
And them that don't know him won't like him
And them that do sometimes won't know how to take him
He ain't wrong he's just Muslim
but his pride won't let him do things to make you think he's right
Mama don't let your babies grow up to date Muslims
Don't let 'em pick guitars and drive them old trucks
Make 'em be doctors and lawyers and such
Mama don't let your babies grow up to date Muslims
They'll never stay home and they're always alone
looking for someone to kill.
Mama don't let your babies grow up to date Muslims
Don't let 'em pick guitars and drive them old trucks
Make 'em be doctors and lawyers and such

Denial by both communities in the OC Register:

Culture, not just religion, may be a factor
By GWENDOLYN DRISCOLL
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

The man linked to a double homicide and assault is Muslim. The girl he courted, Hindu. The victims are members of her family. Was the motive religion?

Perhaps.

Iftekhar Murtaza, 22, a Muslim man from Van Nuys, is now linked to the deaths of Jayprakash Dhanak, 56, and his daughter Karishma Dhanak, 20, and the beating of Leela Dhanak, 53. The three victims were the father, sister and mother of 18-year-old Shayona Dhanak – described by police as Murtaza's former girlfriend.

Court papers obtained Tuesday by the Register said Murtaza "was upset with (Shayona Dhanak's) parents and sister for discontinuing the relationship due to different religious backgrounds, Hindu and Muslim."

But was religion the real reason the relationship might have been discouraged?

Islam and Hinduism stress peace and advocate against violence, according to Govind Vaghashia, a spokesman for the BAPS Swaminarayan temple in Whittier that the Dhanak family attended.

"We do not believe in violence at all," Vaghashia said.

Raymond Williams, professor emeritus of religion from Wabash College in Indiana, who has written widely on South Asian religions, said the Dhanaks, like many families, may have discouraged a liaison between their daughter and a non-Hindu for cultural as well as religious reasons.

"For most Hindu families the tradition is arranged marriage and not dating," Williams said. "Dating was not what most parents from India would normally expect. And most parents would prefer marriage partners from within the Hindu tradition."

Dating in particular is a Western concept that is still being tested by South Asians and other immigrants to the United States, Williams said.

Shakeel Syed, the executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, said, "Under no circumstances violence is permitted, particularly in regard to marrying someone or divorcing someone."

The BAPS Swaminarayan branch of Hinduism practiced by the Dhanaks emphasizes "purity" – of mind and body, Vaghashia said.

"You have a community that stresses self-control, discipline (as well as) chastity before marriage and fidelity after." Williams said.

Parents would expect to be closely involved in the choice of a partner, Williams said.

"The Swaminarayans do emphasize family values," he said.

1. What makes Ganesh Vahashia an expert on Islam to make the statement that he did? (He happens to be wrong on Hinduism as well - Hinduism stresses dharma i.e. righteousness, and the Hindu mythology has its appropriate share of violence to enforece that, both in the Puranas, as well as in the Epics - Ramayan and Mahabharat)
   
2. In the absense of any statements from the family, it's jumping to conclusions to assume that the parents would only have allowed an arranged marriage, particularly if they are here since the 80s, and despite being devout Hindus, seem well assimilated. Religion may well have been the factor, and a pretty good one - why would any Hindu settled here agree to let their daughters become a tilth of Mohammedans from a third world shithole like Bangladesh?
   
3. Family values here would mean things like parental approval, since Hindu marriages generally translate into relationships between the 2 families, not just the individuals, and the idea of a Hindu and a Muslim family being on close terms is bizzare. This does not mean that had the daughters picked their own boyfriends whose family was somewhat compatible with them, it would have been rejected. Also, it's usually expected that the daughters/sons get married in the sequence of eldest first, going on down, and since the older sister (one of the victims) wasn't married, it's likely that the question of the younger sister marrying may not have been looked at favorably. While that may have been the case here, it's more likely that being devout Hindus, they refused to allow a daughter of theirs to in the long term Islamize.
   

Once again - fry this guy.

Sorry, Govind, not Ganesh.

Hey, Infidel Pride - this is your standard religious Jewish guy who's spending the summer reading the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Westerners associate Hinduism with M.K.Gandhi and pacifism, clearly wrong. But of course, it is not a world-conquering, gratuitously savage ideology like militant Islam. It seems to me that dharma includes righteousness, as you say, and duty, and law, and justice, and truth, and mercy, and all the complexity of the world. (I've previously read the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita and Yoga Sutras.)

Question about the Ramayana - the depiction of Ayodhya is very inspiring and moving. Is this the same Ayodhya that has been in the news in modern times? Did the Muslims build a mosque at one of the holiest sites of Hinduism? If so, this is like the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque built on the ruins of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, the holiest site to Jews; the conversion of the St. Sophia Church (one of the largest in Christendom) in Constantinople into a mosque; the attempt to build an enormous mosque in Nazareth, childhood home of Jesus; etc. What has happened recently regarding Ayodhya?

Besides, I thought most of the 'cultural' killings of young women in Hindu-dominated areas were lighting them on fire?

'The victims were stabbed, strangled and had "moderate" burns, according to Arizona court documents.' - FoxNews

And usually the family members are not included in these, from what I've seen in reports from South Asia regarding Hindu women killed for these reasons.

I'm no expert, but this looks muzlim to me.

Anyone have more data?

Too bad California is in the 9th circuit court. He ain't ever gonna fry. What should be done is to put that scumbag in the meanest nastiest prison. No solitary confinement: just let the prison inmates have their way with him, and feed him Pork!

Surak

It's exactly as you say - the Ayodhya of the Ramayan is where the movement by Hindus to re-build a temple that was destroyed by the Moghul emperor Babur took place. The official name of the place (obviously since Moghul times) is Faizabad, which is a double insult, since not only was a temple replaced by a mosque but the name of the Kingdom around which the concept of Ram Rajya - which is said to embody perfect rule for Hindus - was Islamized as well.

What happened there? In December 1991, after years of the Hindu movement trying to get the Muslims to negotiate that place back to Hindu ownership, Kar Sevaks (volunteers) stormed the site and leveled the mosque with their bare hands (some crowbars were involved). After the riots that followed throughout India, a makeshift prayer area was made in that place, and has been under security protection ever since, since it's known that if Muslims get to disturb it, there'd be riots again. Two years ago, there was a Jihadi attack on the site that got foiled - all the suicide bombers who attacked and tried to take out that place got killed. It's still an open political issue in that state.

And on the comparisons between Temple Mount and Ram Janmabhoomi, you are right again - just as Muslims are squatting over Temple Mount with the al Aqsa mosque, there are thousands of mosques in India that were built over Hindu, Jain and Buddhist temples that were destroyed precisely to make way for them. And in India, there are 3 mosques that Hindus demand back, since they constituted the holiest shrines for Hindus. One was the Ram Janmabhoomi (Ram's birthplace) at Ayodhya; the second is at Mathura - Krishna's birthplace, and the third is at Varanasi (Banaras), where a Shiva temple was similarly mosqued. While the Ram Janmabhoomi is partially solved right now (although no temple has been allowed to be built, the question of re-building a mosque is recognized by all parties as politically explosive, and isn't likely to ever happen), the other two mosques at Mathura and Varanasi remain festering issues. I hope that someday, the Jews get the Temple Mount back and can re-build King Solomon's temple, just as I hope that Mathura and Varanasi mosques get levelled, and replaced by temples.

Also, warfare in Hindu mythology and epics is pretty much descriptive, rather than prescriptive - just as it is in Jewish texts. For instance, in the Ramayan, Rama, who went to war against Lanka, did so because his wife was abducted and held prisoner there: throughout that war, he sent peace feelers to Ravana (his enemy), asking that all Ravana would have had to do would have been honorably return her, and there would have been peace. Similarly, the Mahabharata was about warfare between two different parties of the same kingdom - one of which absolutely refused any territorial compromise or sharing. In the Vishnu Puranas, Vishnu's 6th avatar (incarnation) Parashuram massacred 21 generations of Kshatriyas to avenge his father's murder - something that would be considered excessive even by those standards. In the Ramayan, he was reprimanded and condemned for those acts by Rama and Lakshman, which is part of why Brahmins don't exactly have a theological basis for wiping out kshatriyas. But all this does belie the notion that Hinduism is about peace, when it's about righteousness.

Infidel Pride - thank you for your lucid explanations. To the people of Bharata I say:

"Namaste!", and

"Jaya vijayi bhava!"

Has anyone heard anything new, by the way, in the Armanious case?

I'm amazed yet encouraged that the religious angle was even mentioned.

Funny, but when the report started on Fox 11 LA local news the first thing I said to my poor, long suffering fiancee was "I bet he's a muslim".

She rolls her eyes at me.

News anchor says "Iftekhar Murtaza, 22, a Muslim man from Van Nuys....", I say "His defence will be 'Cultural differences, and he'll be found 'Not Guilty' by some liberal hippie moron collective of a jury".

Hope this scumbag gets to fry for what he did.

Hugh,

"the tail does not wag the dog"

May 18, 2007
http://www.nj.com/newslogs/jjournal/index.ssf?/mtlogs/njo_jjupdate/archives/2007_05.html

From Saturday's Washington Post: An unusual, inexplicable death of a Bengali Christian realtor.

Realtor Was Slain While Trying to Sell Home
Friends and Family Mourn Man Who 'Was So Good to Everyone'
By William Wan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 27, 2007; Page C04

A Beltsville Realtor whose body was found in the basement of a Bowie home Friday was apparently killed while trying to sell the house, police said yesterday.

The owner of the vacant house discovered the body of Samuel D'Costa with multiple gunshot wounds, Prince George's County police said. Investigators arrived at the house in the 12800 block of Ninth Street about 1:30 p.m.

Realtor Samuel D'Costa had moved recently to Beltsville with his family. The immigrant from Bangladesh was the father of two infant sons. (Family Photo - Family Photo)

D'Costa's burning car was found Thursday on Daisy Lane in Glenn Dale, about three miles away, but no connection was made immediately, police said last night.

Police did not say whether they have found a motive in the killing.

Friends and family recalled D'Costa, 36, yesterday as a family man who was shrewd at business, skilled at sports and caring to many in the area's Bengali Christian community.

Islam and Hinduism stress peace and advocate against violence, according to Govind Vaghashia, a spokesman for the BAPS Swaminarayan temple in Whittier that the Dhanak family attended.

Vaghashia seems to have amnesia - else he would not have forgotten the attack on BAPS Akshardham Temple in Gandhinagar on 24 September 2002 by Muslim terrorists.

Islam is violent crime.