By Mark Steyn
SteynOnline.com
February 8, 2011
Muzzammil "Mo" Hassan chopped off his wife's head, and then claimed it was because she'd been spousally abusing him. This was not in Yemen or Waziristan but in Buffalo. Despite the chutzpah (if he'll forgive the expression) of his defense, yesterday the jury took less than an hour to find him guilty of murder.
The Hassan case was fascinating not just because his entire public identity was a fraud but because the media so enthusiastically promoted that fraud. Two years ago, in Headless Body In Gutless Press, I wrote:
Just asking, but are beheadings common in western New York? I used to spend a lot of time in that neck of the woods and I don’t remember decapitation as a routine form of murder. Yet the killing of Aasiya Hassan seems to have elicited a very muted response.
When poor Mrs. Hassan’s husband launched his TV network to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims, he had no difficulty generating column inches, as far afield as The Columbus Dispatch, The Detroit Free Press, The San Jose Mercury News, Variety, NBC News, the Voice of America, and the Canadian Press. The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle put the couple on the front page under the headline “Infant TV Network Unveils The Face Of Muslim News”.
But, when Muzzammil Hassan kills his wife and “the face of Muslim news” is unveiled rather more literally, detached from her corpse at his TV studios, it’s all he can do to make the local press — page 26 of Newsday, plus The Buffalo News, and a very oddly angled piece in the usually gung-ho New York Post, “Buffalo Beheading: Money Woe Spurred Slay“.
Oh, really? He beheaded her for some goofy clause in the insurance policy? Not exactly:
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