Aasiya Hassan's Beheading an "Honor Killing"?

Well, the hyenas are out in the comments to my most recent post on the beheading of Aasiya Hassan, "Islamist Decapitation and Western Apologists." The intensity of the comments, which are not just analytical remarks, but crude ad hominem attacks, raises the question of why? What's at stake for these people, these nihilists who can see no fundamental distinctions in this crime?

Indeed, Repsac3 has distorted the basic issue out of all proportion, for example, on Mark Steyn's remark that, "If Muzzammil Hassan decapitated his [wife] as an Islamic ritual, then his entire professional life — Mister Moderate Muslim — was a lie." Steyn is not asking "if Hassan's beheading was an Islamic ritual killing"? He's indicating the stakes for allegedly "moderate" Muslims and cultural relativists in how the outcome of this Islamic barbarity is framed. Indeed, as the Buffalo News reports:

While Muslim leaders have urged against applying cultural stereotypes to the crime, advocates for women linked the killing to attitudes in Muslim societies.

“This was apparently a terroristic version of honor killing, a murder rooted in cultural notions about women’s subordination to men,” said Marcia Pappas, New York State president of the National Organization for Women.

She decried the scant national media attention paid to the story, which broke the same day as the commuter plane crash that killed 50 people in Clarence.

While domestic violence affects all cultures, Muslim women find it harder to break the silence about it because of a stigma, she said.

As I reported earlier, and citing Timothy Furnish's, "Beheading in the Name of Islam," Muzzammil Hassan's method of killing is rooted in ancient Muslim culture and tradition. Because Mrs. Hassan had just filed for divorce, the overwhelming likelihood is that Muzzammil would lose face among the Islamic communty's business investors if his wife's independence indicated dishonor to a Muslim man.

According to Phyllis Chesler in her update, "Cold, Premeditated, Ritual Murder. The Honor Killing of Aasiya Z. Hassan. Part Two," Aasiya Hassan's sister has spoken to the fact that Mrs. Hassan had been beaten and bruised over a period of 8 years. This violence is being seen as not simply "domestic violence," but Muslim-generated cultural subordination to the male head of household.

Indeed, think about it? Why beheading? Why did Muzzammil resort to the barbarity of beheading in killing his wife? WHY DIDN'T HE JUST SHOOT HER? That would be "American-style" if this man is so moderate and assimilated. No, this killing is not a case of spontaneous patriarchical rage? This is methodical, premeditated religious ritual. An understanding of this is found only within the context of medieval practice. Muzzammil deliberately chose the method of killing known around the world as THE CRIME OF CHOICE among the most extreme aderents to Islamist barbarity and terrorism. This is jihadi justice and honor in the home. Had Muzzammil indeed been so "moderate," he certainly wouldn't have risked the image of the assimmilated, secular Muslim community he cultivated by adopting a method of killing straight out the 8th century.

As one of the readers at Daniel Pipes' blog notes:

The hard question that needs to be asked here is how a supposedly "moderate" Muslim figure like Muzzammil Hassan ended up committing an act (an apparent honor killing) that represents one of the most barbaric attributes found in Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures.

Aasiya Hassan's independent actions brought dishonor upon the family pride of Muzzammil Hassan. While attorneys for Mr. Hassan reject the portrayal of pride and honor as motives for Mrs. Hassan's murder, some women's advocates remain convinced:

Advocates for women — some of them Muslims — have called for the community to acknowledge religious and cultural traditions that stigmatize divorce and heighten the danger of violence in divorce cases.

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UPDATE: Roger Gardner weighs in on this "debate":

Are we seriously going to debate this issue? Have we slipped that far down that slippery slope of multicultural pc nonsense? Have we abandoned all reason, all common sense, merely to show our respect to a bloodthirsty cult that poses as a legitimate religion? Have we learned nothing in all this time? Are we determined to continue our roles as useful idiots? Will we just ignore all that we have learned about the treacherous duplicity of the Muslim world, the evil machinations of its political arms, most noticeably in the recent scandals of that serpent's nest CAIR?

How can we seriously consider such a question? How can we still be this naive, this clueless, as to the nature of the enemy in our midst?

Was it murder? My God! What are we becoming? Are we now going to change our very vocabulary to suit our most recent - and most dangerous - immigrants?

To pose this as an either/or question presumes that there are two possible answers. And to make that preposterous presumption is to denigrate everything we stand for.

Yes, Roger, the leftists denigrate everything we stand for.