Don't be that guy, Muzzemmil.

There is a story I've been aware of for a while that was highlighted on Bill Maher's show. I have been kind of neutral about it, not in the "I could care less fashion" but rather, in the "I don't know why it happened and won't opinionate about it."

The story has to do with the head of a tv network ostensibly created to dispel Islamic stereotypes. The grim "punchline", from the human interest pov, is that he beheaded his wife with a scimitar. Yes, I know that as punchlines go, that one is not so funny. It's supposed to "work" with the "dispelling Islamic stereotypes" line, but gets tripped up on the fact that he killed the mother of his children in a horrible way. Is this about culture, then? Religion? Or is it about a pattern of abuse? Because this guy seems to have had one. She was his third wife. The third to claim abuse. She had filed a stay-away order. And she was filing for divorce on the grounds of his abuse of her.

Can we say that the abuse of his wife, which ultimately led to her death, can be laid at the foot of Islam? I can't say that. Many partners, whatever their religion, can come to blows with their spouse--and not have religion play any part in the conflict. They have "anger issues." They were "under the influence". They just "snapped" under a great load of emotion, and struck out.

It doesn't have to play into his culture. He could just be a sick man who never learned to deal with his personal issues. The point where it became a story was where he grabbed a sword to perform the deed, so reminiscent of honor killings and the decisions of sharia law against, for example, "adulterous women", elsewhere. Why a sword, and why beheading? Had he wrapped his hands around her throat, we'd have given no thought about the simple domestic brutality--the idea of "honor killing" might not have been spoken. But if this were a crime of passion--what if the sword simply was at hand? What if the scimitar was a decorative item, as Maher imagines?

It was simply handy. Like a pot of boiling hot coffee might be, or a gun, or a knife. Or a belt. Or a hand. Or a hand made into a fist.

Even if culturally, he was acclimated to the idea that women should be brought to hand, and that family honor rested on the woman's behavior, I say it was nonetheless himself who decided to do the deed, to do other deeds, to be an abuser. Certainly there are men who are aware of these traditions of outrages against women who trangress some cultural more--but they don't all go in for it. No, I bet they don't. It crops up too damn often in the press (it should not happen at all), but I wonder how many husbands turn aside, and reflect that their family is worth more than honor. I want to think the number would impress me. I want to think that this westernized man, who seemed so soft-spoken and gentle to so many, was just some frightful exception.

But I can't help but reflect that a patriarchal, anti-woman interpretation of religion had something to do with it. And I can't help but suppose that any anti-woman religion might've done the same (in influencing abuse). And I like religion a little less for that. Being female, and all. Was there nothing he learned that might've made him push back against the thought of murder?

I was reluctant to blog on the tale because I didn't know. I blog about it now because I still don't know. And I think not-knowing leaves a valid question--was it religion, or simply misogyny? Did his religion teach him hate, or did he hate because he was mad, and just hated? Does religion play a part at all? Or was it just the incidental thing that makes the story ironic and sad? I won't just lay it at the foot of Islam--because women are abused the world over. I suspect the religion doesn't help, thought.