Marwa al-Sherbini

biko

Sorry if this is the wrong place but I couldn't think of a place where this news would be known other than this forum.

Have you read about the court room murder of Egyptian woman Marwa al-Sherbini in Dresden? This has got Egyptians in a frenzy over how a woman could be killed in a court room (stabbed 18 times) before anyone would help her.

What baffles me is that a pregnant woman is killed by man in a racist attack in a German court room in front of her husband and young son and the police shoots the husband instead of the murderer, and it's hardly not reported in Western media?

Are attacks on Muslims now so commonplace that it's not newsworthy any more or are the papers just not wanting to report things to blow them out of proportion? Or something else?

Iwasfrozen

I think basically that Muslims have gotten such a bad name in western countries that the majority of western people don't care about muslim killings.

wes

It is rather odd that this has received so little attention in the media. If this was the other way around, it certainly would have received major coverage.

Also, ignoring the Muslim angle, it should be a huge deal, due to the fact that this happened in a court. Clearly exposing a huge amount of incompetence in German court security. Such incompetence, could easily scare potential witnesses from testifying for example, if they aren't even safe in a court room.

Iskenderun

I think the reason for the lack of coverage is that it was seen as a kind of 'one off' tragedy. It is extremely rare for a Muslim in Europe to be murdered simply because they are Muslim.

biko

wes wrote: »

Also, ignoring the Muslim angle, it should be a huge deal, due to the fact that this happened in a court. Clearly exposing a huge amount of incompetence in German court security.

Definitely has a lot of ingredients for big news, "Pregnant woman murdered in court in front of her family". Alas, hardly nothing...

Rev Hellfire

It was covered by the BBC -> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8144154.stm

But lets be honest the story is less about a Muslim getting killed but rather the failure of the courts security to prevent such an occurrence in the first place.

Sesshoumaru

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

I think basically that Muslims have gotten such a bad name in western countries that the majority of western people don't care about muslim killings.

That is quite a sweeping generalisation. Any source for that claim?

More information here:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/07/06/egypt.woman.killed/

The man, identified in German media as Alex A., 28, was convicted of calling Sherbini, who wore a headscarf, "terrorist," "bitch" and "Islamist" when she asked him him to leave a swing for her 3-year-old son Mustafa during an August 2008 visit to a children's park.

I think this guy was clearly insane, a playground incident blowing up into full blown murder in a court room. I have to agree with Rev Hellfire and say this not so much about a Muslim being killed, but an innocent woman being killed due to incompetent security in a court room.

Hundreds attended Sherbini's funeral in Alexandria, Egypt, her hometown, among them government officials, including Egyptian Manpower Minister Aisha Abdel Hadi and Telecommunications Minister Tariq Kamel, Egyptian media reported.

Nice to see the Egyptian government exploiting this, nothing like an external enemy to distract people from problems in their own country.

Sherbini and her husband moved to Dresden in 2003, after the husband received a grant to study genetic engineering in the renowned Max Planck Institute. He was scheduled to present his Ph.D. thesis in the coming days.

Both the husband and wife appear to be have been upstanding people. The wife brave enough and with enough willpower to go through the drama of a court room appearance to defend her rights over a playground slur. The husband also obviously an intelligent guy to have gotten where he is today. It is a real human tragedy.

Zaynzma

Attacks on Muslims aren't actually all that rare, there have been numerous incidents of women with hijab being stabbed or beaten while the perpatrator shouted insults about their hijab or Islam, I remember reading little paragraphs which were really just reports of a court case when I hadn't seen anything at all about the original stabbing or attack. None of the excuses offered for the lack of media coverage of this event are very convincing.

I get a bit irritated that attacks like this are always described as 'isolated incidents' carried out by a 'nutter', when any time a Muslim does anything bad it is always presented as 'because he's a Muslim'.