NPR Insists Buffalo Wife’s Beheading by Muslim Outreach TV Founder Has No Islamic Overtones
Almost the entire media skipped this chilling honor-killing verdict from Arizona on Tuesday, from Reuters : “An Arizona jury on Tuesday found an Iraqi immigrant guilty of second-degree murder for running down his daughter with a Jeep because she had become too Westernized.” Faleh Almaleki killed his daughter Noor in October 2009 because she spurned his arranged marriage and was living with her boyfriend. Apparently, to report this is to be “Islamophobic.” NPR skipped Almaleki, but they noted the verdict in another horrific killing on Monday night's All Things Considered: Aasiya Hassan was beheaded by her husband Mozzamil in 2009 as the two headed a Buffalo television project designed to create better understanding about Muslims. NPR reporter Dina Temple-Raston's objective was to deny this crime was about Islam. Instead, she said, it was simply about domestic violence. NPR anchor Robert Siegel tried to explain that “at the time, the media seized on the murder as an honor killing. That's a killing allowed in some Muslim societies when shame has been brought on a family. But NPR's Dina Temple-Raston reports from Buffalo, the Hassan case is really about domestic violence and it forced an entire community to reckon with stereotypes.” “The media” didn't exactly seize on Aasiya Hassan. But Glenn Beck did, and some local news outlets. Temple-Raston was insisting Beck and Company were all wrong, that they were purveying negative stereotypes. She went directly to Dr. Khalid Qazi for her thesis, a man she said “looks like Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'” She did not explain he was a head of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a professional spin controller on these issues, or that Dr. Qazi recently welcomed Ground Zero Mosque imam Faisal Abdul-Rauf to Buffalo: Dr. QAZI: Nobody in the community can get their arms around that notion that he would not only kill her, he would stab her 40, 50 and perhaps 60 times and then decapitate her. There's absolutely no stomach for that. TEMPLE-RASTON: Because she was Muslim, because of the way she was killed, and because Aasiya Hassan had filed for divorce just days before the murder, the media assumed that the killing was sanctioned by Islam. Unidentified Woman Anchor: A brutal crime in Buffalo, New York. A Pakistani-born man is accused of beheading his wife, and there's speculation it may be a so-called honor killing. Mr. GLENN BECK (Host, “The Glenn Beck Program”): All right. This guy started a Muslim-American cable TV network to challenge stereotypes about his faith. You know, apparently, we're just too stupid. We just all think that all Muslims are bad. TEMPLE-RASTON: That was Glenn Beck talking about the case. In fact, the Muslim community was being stereotyped. Dr. Qazi said news of the murder was everywhere. Dr. QAZI: So there is this constant reminder of this monster who we all tried to project and help to establish a lifestyle television channel to show who we are and what we stand for and then we get this. TEMPLE-RASTON: Buffalo's Muslim community had already had its share of these kinds of stories. There were suspicions after the 911 attacks. And then, to make matters worse, a year after 911, six young Muslims from the Lackawanna community, just outside of Buffalo, were arrested and pleaded guilty to training at an al-Qaeda camp. Against that backdrop, stereotyping was easy. This had to be an honor killing, except it wasn't. The idea that Mo Hassan's murder was “everywhere” is simply untrue. As I noted at the time , the national media (including for a while, NPR) were certainly not picking up the story, despite the enormous news hook of “Muslim-understanding czar beheads wife.” The outlets that did report it predictably downplayed the Muslim angle. But pay attention to that part about the Lackawanna Six. Temple-Raston wrote an entire book on those terrorists in training called The Jihad Next Door. At Amazon, the Booklist review crackles with how this NPR reporter exposes the dark age of Bush: As she sensitively portrays each of the five men currently behind bars, she reveals their dire na
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on February 27, 2011. Filed under