Will Honor Killing Threats Keep Harry Potter Actress in Permanent Hiding?
December 22, 2010, 5:44 pm
by Phyllis
Chesler
We do not post this article
to promote harry potter in any way shape of form. We post this article to show
your children and others of the blackness and
evil of Islam, (Muslimism, Mohammadism) The young minds of the next generation
must firmly understand what their friends neighbors and those around them are
being blindly sucked into, and are being brainwashed by.
Afshan Azad, 22, the high-profile Harry Potter actress remains in hiding after refusing to appear in a London court. Ms. Azad had been seeing a non-Muslim man, a Hindu. Her family, specifically her father, Abul Azad, 53, and her brother Ashraf,
28, called her a “prostitute” and tried to force
her into an arranged marriage with a Muslim man. Her brother also beat and her
father threatened to kill her in May of this year. She escaped her family home
and has been in hiding ever since. According to the Telegraph, she refused to testify against her family, saying that doing
so would endanger her further. Apparently the British police tried
but failed to persuade Ms. Azad to testify.
Ms. Azad’s refusal to appear makes sense to me.
She is already in great danger for having associated with a non-Muslim man. Add
to that the public and shameful exposure of her family in this matter. Having
her male relatives jailed would mean a torturous death sentence.
I have published two studies about honor killing. The first appeared in 2009 in Middle
East Quarterly; the second appeared there as well in 2010. In the most recent
publication, I
studied 230 victims who were honor-murdered on five continents over a twenty
year period in 172 separate incidents. (More than one person was
murdered in some of the incidents). As these studies have shown, immigrants to
the West, including and especially immigrants from South
Asia (Ms. Azad is of Bangladeshi descent), continue to perpetrate
honor killings in the West.
The level of violence towards girls and women in South
Asia can be barbarous and quite unbelievable.
In Islam all
of these things spoken of are not just allowed or condoned, but Islam Sharia
Law these things you read of are commanded to be defended by every individual muslim. For anyone no to enforce
these violent, barbaric, evil, satanistic laws – the
same treatment is to befall them and their household. Islam is a religion of great evil and great
fear. Whether it is
practiced in the Middle East, Southern Asia, North Africa, or in Europe. All
that you read here happens on a daily basis in all these countries and nations.
Why is it not stopped? It is because this is Islam,
this is Sharia Law. For this to stop
Islam and Sharia Law would have to cease.
Instead it is expanding every day all over the world, and soon to
swallow all of Europe.
Horrific
vigilante mob violence is routinely perpetrated against innocent individuals in
Pakistan.
Recently, the Pakistani “Taliban” have been known to throw acid into the faces
of schoolgirls, disfiguring them for life, if they were seen as improperly
veiled or trying to attend grade school.
In 1998, Zahida Perveen’s husband, in a
fit of rage, bound her hand and foot and then, using a razor and a knife,
proceeded to cut out her eyes and slice off her ears and nose. Zahida’s crime?
Her husband suspected that she was having an affair with a brother-in-law. At
the time, Zahida was three months pregnant.
In 2004, a tribal council in Pakistan in the Punjab
ordered that a young girl be publicly gang-raped then paraded naked through her
village—a
punishment for an alleged crime committed by her brother. This case
became known worldwide when the girl not only did not kill herself but indeed
pressed charges.
Girls in South Asia and elsewhere
are routinely killed for far less than choosing their own husbands.
They are murdered if a false rumor has been spread or if they are seen even
talking to a male non-relative. There are few police officers, few judges, few social workers, few lawyers who would be
able or willing to protect Ms. Azad in South East Asia
from her
family’s permanent desire to kill her and so to “cleanse their own shame.”
Honor killings take place both among rural, indigent and illiterate South Asian
families—and among highly educated, literate, professional, and wealthy South
Asian families too.
In 2009, I received an extraordinary report which documented honor killings
in Pakistan.
(Although Ms. Azad’s family is from
Bangladesh, the country was actually part of Pakistan until 1971, and its
culture is very similar to Pakistan’s.) My Pakistani informant, of the
SW Community Development Department, in Sind,
Pakistan, sent
me an unpublished paper in which he describes and explains Ms. Azad’s family’s culture very carefully:
Women in Pakistan live
in fear. They face death by shooting, burning or killing with axes if they are
deemed to have brought shame on the family. They are killed for supposed
‘illicit’ relationships, for marrying men of their choice, for divorcing
abusive husbands. They are even murdered by their kin if they are raped.
The truth of the suspicion does not matter — merely the allegation is enough to
bring dishonor on the family and therefore justifies the slaying. The lives of
millions of women in Pakistan
are circumscribed by traditions which enforce extreme seclusion and submission
to men. Male relatives virtually own them and punish disobedience with
violence.
Moreover, there are few safe places for a woman to escape to. Seeking help
outside the family is fraught with danger for a woman. Not only does society
blame a woman for being targeted for murder–the popular perception being that
she must somehow deserve it–but by seeking outside help she risks being sent
back to her husband or father in whose custody she is perceived to belong. Most important by
seeking help outside, she adds shame to her husband and his family by making
the issue public. No Kari ["black" woman marked for honor-killing]
who escapes is ever forgiven, even if her innocence is recognized; some men are
known to have traveled hundreds of miles to find and kill Karis,
even years after the alleged misdeed.
This is Afshan Azad’s
cultural background. She may be a young, modern, and popular actress who
happens to play the part of a young witch, but all of Harry Potter’s magic
cannot protect her from the normalized violence towards women both in Pakistan and
among South Asian immigrants to the West.
What shelter can Britain
provide? The British police have acted properly. The law stood ready to condemn
this threatened honor killing, this particular form of family violence. In
fact, the British police have the legal power to rescue girls and women who
have been kidnapped from Britain
to South Asia and return them to the West.
However, can Britain
today offer a safe way of life for a young women like Afshan Azad? What Witness Protection Program could hide her
and help her create a meaningful life? How can she remain an actress
“underground”?
South Asian immigrant honor killings, (which are mainly Muslim-on-Muslim
crimes in the West), are not confined to illiterate, uneducated, and
impoverished families. On the contrary. Some powerful,
well-educated, and wealthy families punish their well educated daughters and
wives by honor murdering them. The fact that Afshin
Azad was “allowed” to work as an actress does not mean that she was allowed to
socialize with a non-Muslim or intend to marry a non-Muslim man of her own
choosing.
Welcome to the world of Islamic
gender and religious apartheid.