Tales of the Bizarre: NY Muslim woman slashes husband after she claims he made her do unIslamic things.
NEW YORK – A devout Muslim woman says she slashed her husband’s neck with a kitchen knife as he slept because he forced her to eat pork, wear short skirts and drink alcohol in violation of her religious beliefs.
She’s out on $25,000 bail. This may sound weird already, but it gets odder:
Sarwar’s statement to police paints a picture of a frustrated, confused woman angry that her husband of five months was not what he appeared to be during their brief courtship. Naseem went to her family to ask for a bride and she agreed to marry him, she said in her statement.
But after they were wed, she discovered he had previously dated mostly “white” women, had been married before and liked to go out to drink, she wrote. He said he was Pakistani and a devout Muslim, but in New York he claimed he was half-Pakistani and half-Norwegian, as well as a Unitarian Christian, she said.
He often yelled and cursed her family, she said, and one of his favorite writers was Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses,” which caused violent protests by Muslims in several countries because the book was perceived as an irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad.
“He hates Pakistan and he hates Pakistanis then why did he marry a Pakistani girl?” she wrote.
There’s more at the link.
Len 4:15 pm on October 30, 2009 Permalink |
Nutter.
Dan 4:45 pm on October 30, 2009 Permalink |
So why didn’t she get a divorce? It’s not like divorce is un-Islamic to begin with.
pi.info 7:35 pm on October 30, 2009 Permalink |
A great argument against brief courtships and arranged marriages.
pi.info 8:27 pm on October 30, 2009 Permalink |
Another piece of the story:
Sounds like Borderline Personality Disorder. I used to know someone raised in a Muslim-majority country who had this diagnosis so this pops up a big personal anecdote for me.
Repeated suicide attempts or threats to commit suicide, anger management issues and violence taken together are a huge piece of that diagnose, along with “transient episodes of pyschosis.”
Borderlines don’t deal with human complexity, or “gray areas” real well – loved ones are either near saints walking the Earth, or devils in human skin – there is no ‘middle ground’ – and their estimate of a loved one may cycle back and forth. Also, for Muslim borderlines, this may get a religious overlay. The upshot for Muslim borderlines is that they are far less likely than ‘Western’ borderlines to have substance abuse issues from self-medicating with alcohol or drugs because Islamic societies have less availability/permissiveness of these substances. (In case you’re wondering how I come by the comparative observations, the person I knew was in group therapy with US-born borderlines, and was the only sober person in the room. Anecdotal yes, but a telling one). If this guy was encouraging his wife to take wine – what a disaster.
Treatment is difficult because it is a disorder, which means it involves a spectrum of behaviors/symptoms that are not easily treated with medication. Treatment usually involves years of developing and practicing self-calming skills that the rest of us learned some version of between ages 5 and 15.
You rarely hear about male borderlines because men with a predilection toward violence and “transient episodes of psychosis” are mostly in jail or dead. A researcher has estimated that one in five men in jail are undiagnosed borderlines.
Researchers think the origin of the disease is usually in experiences of child abuse – especially childhood sexual abuse. This is why I’m interested in highlighting efforts to address child abuse, and especially child sexual abuse, in Muslim communities and cultures.
pi.info 8:47 pm on October 30, 2009 Permalink |
“White girls” “half-Norwegian” – race is another form of human complexity that tends to get over-simpified…
learn quran online 4:32 pm on October 31, 2009 Permalink |
she should have asked for divorce instead of killing her husband and