[FoRK] 16 year old girl "Peace and Love"d to Death over Hijab

[Tom Higgins]

Deities and Dress Codes, yea ya know if you keep making excuses for
this stuff it keeps happening.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2007/12/10/teen-girl-in-critical-condition-after-alleged-dispute-over-hijab.aspx

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UPDATE:  Aqsa Parvez has died.

Chris Wattie filed this earlier story:

A 16-year-old girl is in critical condition after being choked by a
man believed to be her father, apparently after a dispute with her
family over her refusal to wear the hijab, the Islamic headscarf worn
by some Muslim women.


Peel Regional Police arrested a 57-year-old man yesterday morning
after receiving a 911 call from a suburban home in Mississauga from a
man saying he had killed his daughter. When police and paramedics
arrived at the house they found a 16-year-old lying on the floor
without any vital signs, police said.

Constable J.P. Valade, a spokesman for Peel police, would not release
the names of either the victim or the man arrested and would not give
any details about what transpired inside the large, two-storey home in
a well-to-do subdivision.

"We are not getting into the details of her injuries at this time," he
said. "We aren't getting into any details about this case. This
investigation is really in its infancy: officers are still canvassing
the neighbourhood and talking to family members."

However, early police reports indicated the teenager had been choked
and that the attacker was her father.

The girl was rushed to Credit Valley Hospital and later transferred to
the Hospital for Sick Children, where she was listed in critical
condition last night with life-threatening injuries.

Her condition is so grave that police have not yet charged the man
arrested at the scene until they know whether he will be charged with
murder or attempted murder. He was scheduled to appear in Brampton
court on Tuesday.

Friends of the teenager, a Grade 11 student at nearby Applewood
Heights high school, identified her as Aqsa Parvez and said they were
shocked by the attack on the outgoing, likeable girl, but said she had
been threatened by her strictly religious family before.

"She got threatened by her father and her brother," said Dominiquia
Holmes-Thompson, who had known Aqsa since they both started high
school together. "He said that if she leaves, he would kill her."

Ebonie Mitchell, 16, another friend of the victim, said the conflict
with her father over wearing Islamic dress came to a head at the
beginning of this school year. "She just wanted to dress like we do,"
she said.

"Last year she wore like the Islamic stuff and everything, the hijab,
and this year she's all Western. She just wanted to look like everyone
else. And I guess her dad had a problem with that."

Ebonie said her friend had left home once before, in September, for
about two weeks. She returned home, but the fights with her family
over what she wore just got worse.

Dominiquia, 16, said her friend had been arguing with her father for
more than a year over the restrictions he imposed on her, including
demanding that she wear the hijab at all times. "She wanted to go out
with her friends, hang out and just be like a normal person," she
said. "But he was always trying to control her ... he wouldn't let her
go out or do anything."

The stricken girl's friends said the fights with her father got so bad
that she had left the family home to live with friends about a week
ago. "She was going back, but just to get her stuff," said friend
Krista Garbutt. "She was scared to go home, but she had to get her
clothes and stuff."

Neighbours said as many as 11 people lived in the home, which was
sealed off by crime scene tape and surrounded by police cars
yesterday, all members of an extended Pakistani family. Const. Valade
confirmed that there were other people in the home when the teenager
was attacked.

"I didn't really know any of them," said one woman, who would not give
her name. "There were a lot of them living in that house, always
coming and going. They didn't talk to me, maybe just to say hello once
in a while. That's all."

The home where the teen was attacked is the listed address of Muhammad
Parvez, a Mississauga cab driver. "He was Muslim and very devout, very
observant," said one of his fellow drivers at Mississauga's Blue and
White Taxi, who did not want his name used. "He was always stopping to
take breaks and pray: three, four times a day."

His eldest son, also named Muhammad, also worked as a cab driver and
lived in the family home with his wife and at least one child, the
driver said. Several people inside the home were questioned by police
before being allowed to leave.

Neighbours said the family moved in just over a year ago."