The reason it has taken me nearly four months to write about this story is because I hadn’t heard anything about it until yesterday afternoon (4 June 2009) while listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR. I blame the media for failing to report on this because I listen to hours of news coverage every day, so it’s not any failing on my part. In particular, I listen to the P.O.T.U.S. channel on Sirius XM Radio for six to eight hours every day, which provides me breaking news at the top of each hour from AP Radio News and quite a number of select blogcasts. Not once in four months had I heard anything about this story.

Anyway, during a news break yesterday on NPR, I heard the announcer state:

A trial date has been set for a Muslim American businessman in New York. He’s charged with beheading his estranged wife at a TV station the couple created to counter Muslim stereotypes. He has pleaded "not guilty" to second degree murder.

Did you catch that? Go ahead, take a moment to finish laughing.

A television station created to counter negative Muslim stereotypes is where this notable businessman in the Muslim community of New York, Muzzammil Syed Hassan, chose to stab and behead his wife of eight years, Aasiya Zubair (allegedly, of course, as he is charged and formally indicted, but not convicted.) Yes, a tragic event like that could definitely go a long way toward dispelling negative Muslim stereotypes, especially when one factors in his eight-year long history of domestic abuses against her, and the fact that his two former wives had likewise filed for divorce on grounds of severe domestic violence and abuses.

Perhaps he wasn’t the best candidate for dispelling Muslim stereotypes?

Adding another level of irony to this story is the fact that President Barack Obama’s recent speech in Cairo, Egypt, despite being well-received and enjoying high praise, is on one level being criticized for failing to adequately address the state of women’s rights and related issues in the Muslim world. It is incidents such as this, particularly that it was a Muslim American family in New York, that underscores the need for these issues to be confronted in a substantive way (cf. Chesler, Phyllis. "Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?" Middle East Quarterly 16 [2009]: 61-69. Print.). And it should begin with leaders of Islamic communities in the United States.

My collection of notes on this story can be found here [PDF].

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