Comment on a recent incident of domestic abuse

Recently, a Muslim man committed a 'honor killing' in upstate New York. The method chosen to dispose of his victim, his wife, was death by beheading.
A prominent Muslim cleric Imam Shaykh Hamza Yusuf has spoken out against such killings (see video here) and is rightly shining a light on domestic abuse amongst minority groups across America. I am glad. However, it irks me that he nonchalantly refers and compares to incidents of domestic abuse in Jewish and Christians families in the following words while making the case that domestic abuse is prevalent across many religious denominations:

If a Christian beats his wife up, it's not Christian violence, if a Jew beats his wife up (from what the statistics show, it does not happen very often), but if they do then it is not Jewish violence - if a Muslim should do something to his wife, suddenly it has something to do with the religion of Islam.

Dear Mr. Hamza Yusuf, there definitely is a difference between beating and beheading. I really do not remember the last time we saw the words 'domestic abuse' and 'beheading' used in the same sentence and the latter being used as a vehicle to propagate the former. Yes, speaking out against domestic abuse is a good and a much needed thing, but comparing beating and beheading are poles apart...

Quotable

"Indian Muslims are proud of being both Indian and Muslim, and the Mumbai terrorism was a war against both India and Islam. Terrorism has no place in Islamic doctrine. The Koranic term for the killing of innocents is 'fasad.' Terrorists are fasadis, not jihadis. In a beautiful verse, the Koran says that the killing of an innocent is akin to slaying the whole community. Since the ... terrorists were neither Indian nor true Muslims, they had no right to an Islamic burial in an Indian Muslim cemetery."

- M.J. Akbar, the Indian-Muslim editor of Covert, an Indian investigative journal. From here.

Photographer Margaret Bourke-White captures a caravan of Muslim Indians fleeing from east to west Punjab escaping Sikh mobs, slowly streaming past the dead of a previous caravan & the whitened bones of their buffaloes & bullocks, India, April 20, 1945. From Life archives here.

Comment on a recent New Yorker magazine cover

I recently wrote about the efforts to 'swift boat' the Obama campaign but here is an episode that might inadvertently help these very efforts…

The recent ruckus over the New Yorker magazine featuring Barack and his wife Michelle on the front cover as a Muslim husband fist thumping his terrorist garbed wife is a fine piece of satire that pokes holes at the efforts by his detractors to smear his campaign who use these very props to reinforce imaginary stereotypes.

Nothing wrong with this. Fine piece of political art and enjoyable.

The only problem is that the number of people who read the New Yorker and understand the subtlety in its satirical art is exceedingly small compared to the multitudes who hear snatches, bits and pieces through water cooler conversations and other gossip exchange mediums. The New Yorker fracas will help these multitudes subconsciously connect the words Obama, terrorist and Muslim and solidly any false ideas that they might have had about these stereotypes. In my view, this will ultimately give the doubters and naysayer a reason to doubt and say ‘I told you so’ more. While the New Yorker cover may have been designed with the good intention to poke fun at the rumor mongering crowd that feeds off people’s insecurities, the exercise may have opened up unintended consequences in its wake whose effects only time will tell.

“Believe nothing against another but upon good Authority: Nor report what may hurt another, unless it be a greater hurt to others who conceal it.” - William Penn (1644 – 1718) Some Fruits of Solitude, 145, 1693

'Darkey in a watermelon', Newspaper advertisment for childrens toy from the 1940's (from here)