Aqsa Parvez, Rest In Peace

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Sixteen year old Aqsa Parvez was murdered by her father, who strangled her to death, we are told, because she did not want to wear hijab.

She had already tried moving out of her Mississauga home, ongoing conflicts about how to dress and behave becoming too much to bear. She went home to get some things and ended up on the front page of the Toronto Sun.

Oppressed people, and most especially women, suffer for being metaphors to their oppressors. How they talk, walk, fuck and dress "represent"/"symbolize"/mean so much to their menfolk, and so controlling/punishing/murdering them becomes a compensation prize for not being able to control much else. Because once he has lost control of his daughter/wife/sister he has symbolically lost control of all that matters.

In life, how Aqsa Parvez dressed and acted meant a lot to her father. She died because of this.

As we focus on the next link in the Great Circle Jerk of Oppression, that patriarchal chain of being, it is only normal that Parvez' death is going to mean so much to so many writers, spokespeople, bloggers - until of course her five minutes are up and we all move on.

Needless to say, white volk are already keen on de-gendering her death. She wasn't killed at the hands of male violence, or as a result of teenagers having so few options when they decide the need to leave home. She was killed by Islam, by Immigrant Culture, by Multiculturalism and a lack of Western Values.

Blog the google on Aqsa Parvez and you'll see what i mean.

At the same time , you can be sure that others will be intent on de-Islamicizing her death, of insisting that her murder is just like the murder of any other woman, except that in her case she is to be denied any specificity at all (always the curse of those who die inconveniently). People will talk about how teenagers in all cultures and religions are having trouble with their parents, as the racist use of her death makes us recoil, hoping to find refuge in an explanation which whitens the whole affair.

In point of fact, in death the sixteen year old Parvez joins two sororities. She is one of the hundreds of Ontario women and children who have been murdered by the Head of the Family, by the One Who Wears The Pants. She is also one of the hundreds of thousands of women who have been killed for wanting to negotiate their own relationship (or lack thereof) to Islam and the various interpretations of its rules.

Rest in peace.