Before he beheaded her
Hassan’s calm call and confession to the police is consistent with the behavior of the perpetrators of other Islamic honor killings around the world. Many times they are quite calm after doing the deed, turn themselves in, and sometimes even express gratitude to Allah for the chance to cleanse their family’s honor. “Cops Detail Statements by Accused Muslim TV Exec in Wife’s Killing,” from 1010 WINS, May 4 (thanks to Mark):
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP/1010 WINS) — A police detective said Tuesday that he hadn’t finished shaking Muzzammil Hassan’s hand upon meeting him before Hassan confessed to killing his wife.
The testimony in Erie County Court, part of a pretrial proceedings in Hassan’s second-degree murder case, provided the first public account of what Hassan said when he walked into the police station last Feb. 12 and directed officers to his wife’s body.
“I want to tell you that I just killed my wife and I’m here to turn myself in,” Lt. Joseph Buccilli said Hassan calmly told him as he greeted him in the lobby.
“She’s gone. There’s no doubt about it,” the 45-year-old Hassan said when Buccilli asked whether he was sure she was dead.
Officers then found 37-year-old Aasiya Hassan’s stabbed and decapitated body inside the Muslim-oriented television station the couple had founded a few years earlier to counter negative media portrayals of Muslims….
Then follows some material about how the defense is going to try to get Hassan sprung based on some alleged police improprieties at the time of his arrest. And then it gets even worse:
Hassan’s attorneys plan to pursue a psychiatric defense which may include claims that Hassan was humiliated and abused at the hands of his wife. He had been served divorce papers less than a week before his arrest. The couple had two young children, who were outside in a van when Hassan spoke with police, witnesses said. They are now living with Aasiya’s mother in Pakistan.
In court Tuesday, Rogers’ co-counsel, Frank Bogulski, asked that Hassan be referred to as “Mo” in court instead of Muzzammil because he has gone by the shorter name for years. Neither the judge nor prosecutor Colleen Curtin Gable would agree to the request.
Good. Personally, I think Hassan looks more like Curly than like Mo. But the whole exercise, in all seriousness, was just an attempt to claim victim status for this man who beheaded his wife:
Outside the courtroom, his lawyers said Hassan felt his name unfairly stereotyped him and that it was difficult enough in a post-9/11 society for a Muslim man to get a fair trial.
“People automatically make assumptions,” Rogers said.
For pete’s sake, Rogers. How are you sleeping lately? Has it ever crossed your mind that people might automatically make assumptions about a guy who beheaded his wife, whether he’s a Muslim or a Theravada Buddhist? Of course, only one religion directs its followers to “strike at the necks” of unbelievers (Qur’an 47:4) — but how “Islamophobic” of me to mention that, since Aasiya Hassan wasn’t an unbeliever!
Of course, if that were a teaching of any other religion, and it had just that kind of tangential relation to a heinous crimes such as “Mo” Hassan’s, prosecutors would have no trouble discussing it as evidence of a cultural atmosphere that would have led Hassan to an increased acceptance of the idea of beheading as a reasonable course of action. But when it comes to Islam, forget it: that will never, ever be mentioned.