Here is another disturbing story that ended up buried in last week’s stimulus debate and failed to make the national news cycle. Like the Chicago public school abuse case that preceded it, I guess we should also file this one under “doesn’t fit the narrative.”
Five years ago, Muzzammil Hassan and his wife Aasiya, Muslim immigrants from Pakistan, started a broadcast network called Bridges TV. Its mission was to promote diversity and understanding between different religions and cultures (i.e. stop negative stereotyping of Muslims in post-9/11 America). The launch of the network, reports Mark Steyn, was covered in such topically and geographically diverse outlets as The Columbus Dispatch, The Detroit Free Press, The San Jose Mercury News, Variety, NBC News, Voice of America and The Canadian Press.
Last week, Aasiya Hassan was found dead in the Bridges TV studios. She had been beheaded. Although reported on local TV, and in the New York Post and Newsday, the story failed to garner any national media attention outside of New York state.
The only suspect in the case is Mr. Hassan, who reported her death to local police and turned himself in last Thursday. The local news reports blame the killing on divorce proceedings filed by Mrs. Hassan, and on financial troubles at the TV network. But why beheading? Oops – sorry, we can’t go there.
Look at the late Aasiya Hassan, beautifully coiffed, glossy-lipped. On countless occasions since 9/11, I’ve found myself at lunch or dinner in New York, London, Washington, Paris or some other western city, sitting next to a modern Muslim woman like Mrs Hassan telling me how horrified she is at how hijabs and burqas, honor killings and genital mutilation, forced cousin marriages and the disproportionate number of Muslim wives in European battered women’s shelters, how all these have come to define Muslim womanhood in the 21st century. Yet Aasiya Hassan ended up no differently – all because her husband’s TV network had a cashflow problem?
The media’s lack of curiosity is in marked contrast to their willingness to propagandize for the launch of Mr Hassan’s station. It also helps explain why the US newspaper business is dying.
Tim Blair has much more, including a nice link roundup.
