On Tues., Aug. 16, 2011 Nazish Noorani was shot and killed while on an afternoon stroll in the suburbs of Boonton, NJ.
Nearly three and a half years after her death, a jury has found her husband, Kashif Parvaiz, guilty of her murder. Finally.
Not that you’d know this if you’ve been following any American Muslim social media activists and organizations in the last few days.
When the news of her death first broke, however, there was a fervor of outrage in the American Muslim online community over what was thought to be an Islamophobic attack. After all, it was right around the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and Parvaiz claimed that three black men yelled something about terrorists before shooting, injuring him and killing Noorani. His claims, which play up two well known stereotypes, went mostly unquestioned by anti-Islamophobia activists, despite the fact that when a woman is killed it is statistically more likely due to an abusive partner than a random stranger. The greater online collective also did not understand that Boonton is home to large Pakistani American community and mosque that has managed to flourish and live peacefully, as Danish Iqbal pointed out earlier today.
The online chatter quickly grew silent as the police zeroed in on Parvaiz as a suspect. Aside from some articles and commentary from women’s rights activists Noorani’s case became just another one of those domestic violence cases we don’t talk about.
Granted, it takes a special kind of scum to spend years researching how to get rid of his wife, then arrange to kill her… by having his girlfriend shoot her… and injure him to make it seem like a robbery or hate crime… in front of their 2 year old son… during Ramadan. This is not the typical domestic violence case. But then the Chapel Hill murders were not the typical hate crime. Stories of such crimes that make the news do so because of the very fact that they’re not typical. Yet, we champion calls for justice selectively. The question is – why?
I am glad justice has been served, only wish this was given more coverage. Perhaps a podcast along the lines of “Serial”.
Beautiful mom and kids. .. So sad.