Friends of Aqsa Parvez said she feared for her life in the days prior to her murder.The Canadian Press has room for Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress (the now infamous Mark Steyn persecutors): "I don't want the public to think that this is really an Islamic issue..." Strange comment, seeing that this was apparently done in the "name of religion", that being Islam. And Elmasry in the past called author Irshad Manji, who also refuses to wear hijab, "anti-Islam", promoting the same attitude toward women who see Islam differently that seems to have led to this girl's death. But I don't blame Elmasry for trying. This comes at a time when him and his CIC are complaining that kafirs like Mark Steyn are endangering Muslims, but this incident shows the opposite: It's Muslims who are hurting Muslims in Canada. Has the opposite ever happened, has any Muslim in Canada ever been killed by the supposedly oppressive non-Muslim majority for their choice to wear the hijab?
The 16-year-old Applewood Heights Secondary School student was strangled on Monday morning inside her family's Longhorn Trail home.
Friends of the teen say she feared for her life and had been embroiled in a cultural dispute with family members in the weeks before her death.
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The victim's 26-year-old brother, Waqas Parvez, is charged with obstructing police.
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The News spoke with several students at Applewood today. They said their friend, known by those close to her as "Axe," feared her father and had argued with him over her desire to shun the hijab, a traditional shoulder-length head scarf worn by females in devout Muslim families.
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Carla Gianetti said Parvez's father imposed several restrictions on his daughter, all in the name of religion.
And, from the same Canadian Press article, quoting Atiya Ahsan from the Canadian Council of Muslim Women: "If you know that your girl is good and she practises her faith, she's not hopping around in what we consider lewd behaviour, then for heaven's sakes you know, let the girl have a chance..." Another strange comment. I mean, is not what's being said here: If the opposite is the case, that she isn't practising Islam, then, don't let the girl have a chance?
Here's something else to think about; the dark irony in being throttled into wearing the hijab: If another girl was strangled by her father for this reason yet lived, and so was frightened into wearing the hijab, what do you think the chances of anyone else seeing the bruising around her neck when it is covered by the hijab? And I do suspect this is the case: This incident was found out because it went to death; I don't doubt that there are many more cases where children are abused into wearing the hijab which are never uncovered.
But then you have the addendum from these apologetics: "...most Muslim women in this country wear the hijab as a result of their own choice..." But who is actually saying that Muslim women don't wear the hijab as a result of their own choice? The real question is why do they choose to wear it? Is undue pressure from their fathers, even violent pressure, a factor in that choice? I don't doubt it, as this very story illustrates. And indeed, there are schools in Canada that force girls to wear the hijab lest they be barred from attending. And many girls are sent to these schools by their parents: What possible recourse do they have then? And I add for good measure: I couldn't say the contrary, that there is even a single school in Canada that forces girls to not wear the hijab.