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Was the killing of Aqsa a Muslim act?
No culture has a monopoly on fatal disagreements between fathers and daughters
Lorne Gunter Freelance
For the past week, I have been in what, for a journalist, amounts to sensory deprivation — no papers, no Internet, no e-mail and only intermittent Spanish-speaking television.
I saw highlights of all the Champions League soccer matches in Europe, but only some of last weekend’s NFL scores and none of the NHL’s.
What North American news there was was spottier than the television reception.
But I could discern that at least two things happened on this continent while I was away: there was a terrific ice storm in the American Midwest and a Muslim girl was killed — in Ontario! — for refusing to wear a hijab.
For seven days I heard nothing of the goings-on in Parliament or the legislature or the think-tanks, advocacy groups or court houses. But even thousands of kilometres away, in a virtual news cocoon, I heard of the tragic death Tuesday of Mississauga teenager Aqsa Parvez from choking injuries she sustained Monday, allegedly at the hands of her father Muhammad Parvez, allegedly after the two clashed over her repeated refusal to wear the traditional Muslim headscarf for women.
The temptation is to write: “See, see, here is another example of the violence inherent in Islam,” to connect Aqsa’s murder to riots in the streets of Khartoum or Ramallah or Karachi over teacher’s naming teddies Muhammad or Danish cartoonists drawing pictures of the prophet.

But is Aqsa’s murder a uniquely Muslim act? True, friends of the Parvez family have said Muhammad and his daughter frequently quarrelled over her refusal to wear the modest clothing he preferred, including the hijab. The arguments became so frequent and hostile Aqsa moved in with another family nearby who permitted her greater freedom to act like the mainstream teens she saw all around.
And, admittedly, police say Muhammad called 911 after one of these fights early Monday and told operators he had killed his daughter. On the surface, then, Aqsa would appear to another victim of Islamic fundamentalism.
But was her asphyxiation really uniquely Muslim? Have traditionalist fathers in other cultures never clashed with their daughters over the latter’s desire to be more modern, more Western, more open? And, are most fundamentalist Muslim fathers just a quarrel away from strangling their daughters?
Of course, other cultures are also prone to intergenerational clashes and Muslim fathers have so far shown no more predilection for murder than fathers of other cultures.
Traditionalist fathers will fight with their Western-raised daughters and sons. Traditionalist mothers can always be found who bristle at their children’s experiments with fashionable dress, pop music and North American dating rituals. Elderly family members tut-tut and wag their fingers in disgust.
Are Muslim immigrants in Canada more prone to disapproval of their children who dabble in mainstream ways? Perhaps. Yet even if they are, they by no means have a monopoly over that disapproval. Sikh, Hindu, Chinese and other communities have their share.
Christian parents have been known to fight with their offspring who drift away from the church, too. I once recommended the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding and set off a storm among fundamentalists who were upset because the film approvingly depicts premarital sex in a nongraphical way.
The parent-child cultural divide has been a common theme in literature and movies forever.
Nor do Muslim parents in Canada have an especially bad record of violent objection to their children’s cultural evolution. The newer a community is in Canada, the more likely it is to witness sharp verbal clashes, but as Barbara Kay pointed out in the National Post late this week, Aqsa’s death may be Canada’s first honour killing. But even if it is, it will not be a uniquely Muslim act unless it is followed up by other killings within the community, killings that become a trend and grow in number.
No Muslim-Canadian group excused Aqsa’s murder. No mobs formed up in the streets to carry placards reading, “Death to all immodest girls who shame their families.” No imams recommended other fathers dispatch their dissolute daughters the same way.
In Jackson, Michigan, this week, about 425 kilometres from Mississauga, a father stood trial for allegedly suffocating his daughter with a pillow after the girl refused to stop boring holes in the walls of the family home. Aside from the usual overwrought feminist suspects, no one suggested this proved anything about all fathers, just as no one has claimed (yet) that the shooter at the church and missionary training school in Colorado demonstrated by his actions a deep, underlying problem with violence among Christian fundamentalists.
To nearly all observers, these were the random acts of individuals who snapped and ended up killing people.
After a teen opened fire at an Omaha, Neb., mall two weeks ago, no one suggested the killings were representative of all teens or even all mall rats.
As a harsh critic in the past of the violent, anti-Western blight I see in too much of the Muslim world, I admit it would be easy to tie Aqsa Parvez’s death up in the same bundle.
Yet, ultimately, I see nothing uniquely Muslim in her death. If, indeed, her father killed her, her death is his doing, not Islam’s.
lgunter@shaw.ca
© The Edmonton Journal 2007
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/business/story.html?id=f3b5b1b1-89bd-405e-b967-b6439fe0dca7&k=85315