Founder of Buffalo TV station aimed at depicting Muslims in positive light accused of killing wife
Feb 15, 2009 04:30 AM
John Goddard
STAFF REPORTER
The founder of a Buffalo Muslim TV station established to portray Muslims in a good light has been charged with murder after his wife was beheaded.
Muzzammil Hassan, 44, arrived at a police station in surburban Orchard Park, N.Y., on Thursday night to say his wife, Aasiya Hassan, 37, was dead.
Police found her body at the offices of Bridges TV, founded in 2004 by Muzzammil Hassan who was inspired by his wife's post-9/11 distress at hearing a radio report she thought portrayed Muslims negatively.
He was charged with second-degree murder. No weapon was found but "the investigation is ongoing," Orchard Park police said.
Aasiya Hassan recently filed for divorce, authorities said. According to Buffalo News reports, she obtained an order of protection on Feb. 6, barring her husband from their home in Orchard Park.
Under sharia law followed by Muslims, a woman can ask for a divorce, but only a man can grant the request, and he can refuse, according to a book on sharia published last month, Cruel and Usual Punishment, by Egyptian-born American author Nonie Darwish.
Under Islamic law, crimes such as apostasy (leaving Islam), adultery, theft or drinking alcohol are punishable by beheading, stoning, amputation of limbs or flogging, the book says.
Nobody at Bridges TV answered phones yesterday and the station's website declared it was "closed for maintenance."
Muzzammil Hassan arrived in the United States from Pakistan in 1979, news reports from 2004 say. They do not say whether his wife arrived with him.
He became a successful Buffalo banker. He has said that his wife was offended by a report she heard shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States.
"She was seven months' pregnant," he told Reuters news Agency in 2004. "She didn't want her kids growing up in this environment."
In response, he founded Bridges TV partly with the stated aim of helping non-Muslims overcome negative images they might have of Muslims and Islam.
"I had no background in television," Muzzammil Hassan told Voice of America at the time.
He said his wife's comment was: `You have an MBA. Why don't you write a business plan?'"
He quit his bank job and launched Bridges TV as a news and lifestyle cable channel.
