Log In

Home
    - Create Journal
    - Update
    - Download

LiveJournal
    - News
    - Paid Accounts
    - Contributors

Customize
    - Customize Journal
    - Create Style
    - Edit Style

Find Users
    - Random!
    - By Region
    - By Interest
    - Search

Edit ...
    - Personal Info &
      Settings
    - Your Friends
    - Old Entries
    - Your Pictures
    - Your Password

Developer Area

Need Help?
    - Lost Password?
    - Freq. Asked
      Questions
    - Support Area



tetradecimal (tetradecimal) wrote in [info]unfunnybusiness,
@ 2009-11-02 10:52:00


Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:wtf?

Muslim Woman Attacks Husband After Being Forced to Eat Pork and Wear Short Skirts
Article here, also pasted below:

New York. A devout Muslim woman told police 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.

Rabia Sarwar, 37, pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and was freed on $25,000 bail. She told police in a written statement that she was emotionally abused by her husband, Seikh Naseem.

"He made me do so many things that are against Islam," she wrote in a statement to police.


"I did all that just to make him happy but inside me there was a war," she continued.

Naseem suffered cuts to his neck, cheek and hand early Wednesday before fighting Sarwar off and dialing 911 from his Staten Island home, authorities said.

"I did my best to cut his throat," Rabia Sarwar wrote. "But the next moment he jumped on me and grabbed me."

Sarwar's attorney, Joe Licitra, said she had previously been treated for depression. Her husband told the New York Post that Sarwar, a native of Pakistan, was having a hard time adjusting to American culture.

"There was no gun pointed to her head to do these things," Naseem told the Post.

Calls to Naseem by The Associated Press went unanswered.

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.

They fought about her leaving, and he threatened to hurt her family, saying they would have to pay him $30,000 or he would sue them and leave them penniless and homeless, she wrote. Her family is in Pakistan.

She lay in bed that evening thinking her only way out was to kill him, she wrote.

Police said they had never visited the house on any domestic dispute calls.

Sarwar also pleaded not guilty Thursday to second-degree assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

According to Sarwar's statement, Naseem was working on getting her green card, but her parents had apparently started the citizenship process for her a few years before. She is not a U.S. citizen and could face deportation, depending on the outcome of the case.

Her next court date is Monday.



(Post a new comment)


[info]kumquat_of_doom
2009-11-02 05:09 pm UTC (link)
...Oh boy.

What a mess.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]rosehiptea
2009-11-02 07:38 pm UTC (link)
My sentiments exactly.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]kefanii
2009-11-02 05:29 pm UTC (link)
It's like a triple disaster in every direction and I can only stare in horror.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]silmaril
2009-11-02 05:38 pm UTC (link)
Yes, there is no good to come of it anywhere I can see.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]skypirate
2009-11-02 06:48 pm UTC (link)
Exactly. What a clusterfuck.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]finchbird
2009-11-03 02:12 am UTC (link)
This. So much.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]plazmah
2009-11-02 05:33 pm UTC (link)
Oh god. It's like that one storyline in 'Girls of Riyadh' but so much worse.

(Reply to this)


[info]minibalrogmum
2009-11-02 05:53 pm UTC (link)
Oi. That's an especially knotted mess. Untangle one bit and just stare at another messy part of it.

Also, half-Norwegian? Would explain a bit why he was less devout, I suppose. My country tends to be relaxed on religion in general.

(Reply to this)


[info]hilohello
2009-11-02 07:34 pm UTC (link)
Oddly, what makes this really horrible for me is the fact that he was taking advantage of a culture he doesn't even belong to.

I just....what? "Okay, I want to marry a traditional Pakistani woman, BUT I WANT HER TO ACT LIKE MOST AMERICAN WOMAN, but if she tries to leave I'll sue her parents." Goddamn.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]soupspooks
2009-11-02 09:20 pm UTC (link)
How is he not part of the culture? Just because someone is more relaxed about certain aspects of their heritage or rejected some of it, or might have changed religions or some such, doesn't automatically exclude them from the entire culture. Otherwise, wouldn't non-orthodox Jews not really be Jews, etc? Not to mention people of mixed heritage, which seems to be the case for this man.

Mind you, personal bias here: I'm of mixed heritage and I highly resent it when people imply that I'm not part of one or the other. And I'm just English/French Canadian, which has lost a great deal of it's significance over the years. This man might hate Pakistani but that doesn't remove his ties to it. And even then what proof do we have that he does hate it? The word of the woman who knifed him over wearing short skits and eating pork and owning a book criticizing the Muslim religion. That's a hell of an extreme reaction, and while it may be perfectly valid from her cultural POV, it's not from a North American one, nor, I'm guessing, from a Norwegian one. It's entirely possible that someone as extreme as her views his more relaxed North American attitude as threatening and hateful, but that doesn't make it so.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]snarkhunter
2009-11-02 09:53 pm UTC (link)
I don't even know if her behavior would fly in her own cultural context, either.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]soupspooks
2009-11-02 10:17 pm UTC (link)
Very true. I don't know anything about the culture in question, though, so I'm leaving it open either way. I just don't think his cultural cred should be taken away because possibly he likes bacon, miniskirts, a beer with friends on Fridays and happens to read up on opposing POVs.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]queencallipygos
2009-11-02 10:35 pm UTC (link)
It sounds like this is more of an extreme case than just a he said/she said, however. It sounds more like he took advantage of the restrictive nature of her culture to be a sadistic cockbib, but then say "oh, but your culture says you can't leave me for making you do this, so nyah nyah!"

I'll grant you that we haven't heard his side yet, but if that's the way things shook down, it's pretty twisted.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]sarracenia
2009-11-02 10:59 pm UTC (link)
Yeah. In all honesty, while I think so far they both sound like assholes, if what she describes is accurate and complete (which is a pretty big if), I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for him. He took a woman from a poverty-ridden, oppressive, and religious culture, attempted to force her into a greater culture shock than he had to from his position of power over her as her husband (seriously, eating pork? I know lax Muslims that just won't. Trying to pressure her into that in particular seems particularly jerkass to me), and then said that he'd bankrupt her family if she left him? Sure, she's coming off as pretty psychotic, but he's coming off as, at least, grossly insensitive.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]soupspooks
2009-11-02 11:00 pm UTC (link)
And I'm saying that it wasn't necessarily a "Your culture" but maybe a "Our culture" thing. There are plenty of people who are willing to be liberal with themselves, but who want a more traditional spouse, especially when it comes to picking wives.

He's half Pakistani at the very least, says so right in the article. This might simply have been a case of someone picking and choosing what aspects of the culture they want to adhere to, and they happened to pick the "a wife must obey/I'll sue your family!" one to keep (and even then we don't know if that's true yet). A jackass move, if it did indeed happen, but not a case of an "outsider" abusing someone else's culture.

I think it's both unfair and counterproductive to pass a value judgment on this man, or yes, even to go "Oh, but if it's true, how awful!" on the subject of potential cultural exploitation until this particular aspect is cleared up. Otherwise, it colours the whole discussion.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]queencallipygos
2009-11-02 11:21 pm UTC (link)
Ah, okay, I thought you were speaking of something different. Gotcha.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]agent_hyatt
2009-11-03 12:41 am UTC (link)
If the woman's statement is true, it's not just picking and choosing culture, it's misrepresenting his culture of choice. Presenting himself as a devout Muslim before marrying then revealing that he considers himself Christian... I'm not religious, but that just strikes me as a pretty big deception.

There are plenty of people who are willing to be liberal with themselves, but who want a more traditional spouse, especially when it comes to picking wives.

There's something about that that makes me shiver. You probably meant "more traditional by the woman's choice" and hopefully that's what the men expect, too, but it just sounds hypocritical and exploitative if the women don't want to be more traditional than their husbands...

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]soupspooks
2009-11-03 01:13 am UTC (link)
No, I meant it in the hypocritical and exploitative way, actually. Flavours of the Madonna/Whore complex if you will: I'll fuck her, but I don't what that as the mother of my child, etc. I've encountered that a hell of a lot more often then "by the woman's choice," though I do acknowledge that there are instances of it.

I think that this entire situation is all kinds of shades of fucked up. But I disagree that we should automatically add "cultural exploitation from an outsider" to the list of fucked up things happening here, because I don't automatically consider this man an outsider to the culture, even if he has let the religion slide. There are a lot of things that make one a part of a culture, and even someone who has totally rejected the culture they came from can be argued as not being an outsider to it, simply someone who's turned away or left. There's a distinction there, you know?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]agent_hyatt
2009-11-03 02:04 am UTC (link)
It's probably more fucked up than "cultural exploitation from an outsider", since he is and insider and allegedly pretends to be a more observant one than he really is.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]telegramsam
2009-11-02 07:52 pm UTC (link)
Okay, WTF?

They both sound like a couple of complete lunatics, frankly. O.o;

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]snarkhunter
2009-11-02 07:53 pm UTC (link)
Yeah. This.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]erototoxin
2009-11-02 09:57 pm UTC (link)
It's nice (in some perverse way) to see that women can be this kind of asshole, too.

(Reply to this)


[info]duende
2009-11-02 11:30 pm UTC (link)
Ohhh, this is not going to end well.

(Reply to this)


[info]herongale
2009-11-03 01:23 am UTC (link)
I'm not sure that I'm going to entirely believe the testimony of someone who thinks that cutting someone's throat is the proper way to handle a dispute, ever. I definitely would like to hear the man's side in this. Perhaps we'll never really know for sure, but the trick of attempting to slander the victim in order to secure public sympathy is not an unknown one.

All we know definitively is this woman violently attacked her husband, with intent to kill. That makes him the victim of a crime. I'm not going to assume he's innocent in all this, but I don't thick speculating on his own possible crimes at this time is right either. The way the man chooses to handle this will say a lot about his own character. If he comes back with his own screed of anger and blame, then I think it would be safe to say that there is probably blame to spread around. But if he comes back with a reasoned response, it would be worthwhile giving him the benefit of the doubt. He was not the one, after all, who decided to "fix" this by resorting to attempted murder.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]sandglass
2009-11-03 03:34 am UTC (link)
But if she's telling the truth, she's a battered woman reacting to an ridiculously abusive situation. People in abusive situations, particularly ones where they cannot leave, tend to not be rational with trying to resolve them.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]solesakuma
2009-11-03 04:22 am UTC (link)
This. If she's telling the truth...

It might not seem much at first sight, but the thought of being married to a man who misrepresented himself, in a country far far away from mine, threatening my family and making me do things that may seem irrelevant but are actually an important part of my beliefs ... well. It seems horrifying.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]eleutheria
2009-11-03 04:26 am UTC (link)
It might not seem much at first sight, but the thought of being married to a man who misrepresented himself, in a country far far away from mine, threatening my family and making me do things that may seem irrelevant but are actually an important part of my beliefs ... well. It seems horrifying.

This. It seems a bit like people are minimizing how awful it is to be turned completely against your own identity in a situation where your family is being threatened, in a strange country where you have no friends or allies. And his comment about it's not like there's a gun to her head makes me want to hit him, hard. Intimidation and coercion count, dammit.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]tez
2009-11-03 05:16 am UTC (link)
And his comment about it's not like there's a gun to her head makes me want to hit him, hard. Intimidation and coercion count, dammit.

Jesus H. Christ, THIS.

I will probably just have to zip my lips after having said that, as this particular sort of thing tends to make me want to turn into a very wanky sort of person.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]tachikoma01
2009-11-03 06:01 pm UTC (link)
Agreed. Peer and familiar pressure may not by physical guns, but they can rip someone apart mentally and force them into situations they wouldn't otherwise choose to be in just as well as a gun can physically.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]queencallipygos
2009-11-03 03:28 pm UTC (link)
People in abusive situations, particularly ones where they cannot leave, tend to not be rational with trying to resolve them.

And I submit as Exhibit A to back this up: Lorena Bobbit.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]issendai
2009-11-03 04:48 pm UTC (link)
And many abusers are masters of the art of coming across as the calm, reasonable ones, often while driving the real victims into even greater hysterics. So a rational response from him is no guarantee that he's actually saner than she is.

On the other hand, if he turned around and accused her of all kinds of atrocities, that wouldn't automatically make him insane or a bad person. She did just try to kill him.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]aloysius
2009-11-03 11:20 am UTC (link)
The "being made to wear short skirts is not that big of a deal" sentiment here is making me want to throw things.

So let's translate this to Western standards, shall we: this man made her walk around in bondage gear in front of his friends although she repeatedly said she's not into it and it made her feel degraded, although before marriage he made all indication than he was as vanilla as they come. How is that not emotional torment?

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]es_
2009-11-03 11:57 am UTC (link)
Thank you, and I completely agree. I'm reading into this as more of spousal abuse than a culture difference myself.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]solesakuma
2009-11-03 01:41 pm UTC (link)
Thanks you for saying it and I agree completely.

And then he made her eat bugs and drink urine.

It is a multidimensional mess, but it does sound like he is quite an abusive asshole (see: gun to the head comment).

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]aloysius
2009-11-03 02:31 pm UTC (link)
And then he made her eat bugs and drink urine.

Oh, ugh. I hadn't even read that, thank you for pointing it out.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]aloysius
2009-11-03 10:43 pm UTC (link)
I mean, the eating pork thing, I don't know how I missed it. But it's so true.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]solesakuma
2009-11-04 07:19 am UTC (link)
It was the horrifying point for me. There's something about forcing someone to eat that deeply disturbs me in a very base level.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]brennalarose
2009-11-05 02:48 am UTC (link)
All of it breaks my heart. He disrespects her and her faith and, when she balked (rightfully so!), he threatens her and her family with ruin. Not to mention, if she's as devout as she sounds, divorce was probably not an option (I can't remember if conservative Islam allows divorce or not, feel free to correct me).

If this guy thought he was just helping her acclimate, I might have been disgusted. From the sounds of it, he's nothing but a sadistic cockbib and that makes me livid.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]issendai
2009-11-05 10:40 pm UTC (link)
I get the impression that he made the threats when she demanded to be allowed to leave him. Islam isn't like, say, Catholicism; men can divorce fairly easily, women can petition a religious court, and the Quran itself says that if your wife wants a divorce, it's wrong not to give one to her. However, it's sufficiently hard for a woman to initiate a divorce that her best bet was to get her husband to initiate the divorce himself. When he refused and threatened to use his rights to bankrupt her family--snap.

Cockbib.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]bienegold
2009-11-03 07:22 pm UTC (link)
THIS.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]underwaterowl
2009-11-03 07:47 pm UTC (link)
Thank you! I read it and it seemed like an open and shut case for battered woman syndrome.

Hopefully her lawyer will explain it to the jury like you did.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]persona
2009-11-03 07:57 pm UTC (link)
This. Just, this. Thank you.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]sandglass
2009-11-03 09:59 pm UTC (link)
Yes, totally.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]felinephoenix
2009-11-04 02:44 am UTC (link)
Just hopping on the thiswagon.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]ldymusyc
2009-11-04 03:25 am UTC (link)
I couldn't decide which bit of that to be more horrified by, but the skirts thing was near the top. If that is indeed true, he might as well have made her walk around naked.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]quantumreality
2009-11-04 06:24 pm UTC (link)
D:

A mess indeed.

(Reply to this)


[info]brennalarose
2009-11-04 07:52 pm UTC (link)
Oooh, this is gonna end badly.

(Reply to this)


 
   
Privacy Policy - COPPA
Legal Disclaimer - Site Map