Out My Window

The founder of a US Muslim TV network has been charged over the beheading of his wife, media reports say.

Muzzammil Hassan, 44, is accused of second degree murder of Aasiya Hassan, whose body was found last week at the TV station in New York state.

Mrs Hassan had filed for divorce after enduring previous incidents of domestic violence, her lawyer told the Buffalo News.

Both Mr Hassan and his wife worked at Bridges TV, a station aimed at countering stereotypes of Muslims. Hassan is the founder and chief executive officer of Bridges TV, which he launched in 2004, amid hopes that it would help portray Muslims in a more positive light.

So the stereotype may not be a stereotype after all.

Berlin - 47 honor killings of Muslim women across Germany in the past six years, according to police.

Great Britain - a police review of 22 domestic homicides last year resulted in 18 being reclassified as ''murder in the name of so-called 'honor.' " Scotland Yard has reopened probes into 109 suspicious deaths, covering a 10-year span, that seem to have been family conspiracies to kill Muslim women.
The United Nations estimates that 5,000 women a year are killed in this way.

13-year-old girl in Somalia had been raped by three armed men. Three days later, after Asha had been tried in an Islamist court, she was stoned to death.

A Toronto teenager's father was charged on Dec. 11 with strangling her to death because she refused to wear a hijab.

In Pakistan, a tribal council ordered a woman to be gang-raped as punishment for her brother's supposed liaison with a woman from another tribe.

In San Francisco, a young Muslim woman was shot dead after she uncovered her hair and put on makeup in order to be a maid of honor at a friend's wedding.

In Tehran, a father beheaded his 7-year-old daughter because he suspected that she had been raped; he said he acted "to defend my honor, fame, and dignity."

In Saudi Arabia, the Islamic police prevented schoolgirls from leaving a burning building because they were not wearing headscarves and abayas; 15 of the girls died in the inferno.

Last year a prominent Saudi cleric went on television to tell Muslim men how to properly beat their wives.
In the video he instructs viewers: "Beating in the face is forbidden ... even if you want your camel or donkey to start walking, you are not allowed to beat it in the face. If this is true for animals, it is all the more true when it comes to humans"

The list goes on and on.
What gives anyone the right to kill or abuse women in the name of honor?
Well, in America we do allow citizens to practice the religion of their choice.