Potential honor killing victim, Harry Potter actress, Afshan Azad, may not have been the one who asked that charges against her father and brother be dropped. One of my wonderful readers, a legal secretary, read the British media more carefully than I did and pointed out that Afshan herself is simply not on record as saying that she wanted the charges dropped or that she wanted to retract anything. While she may have said this, we have absolutely no record of her having done so. I did not note that this quote about dropping the charges was attributed to the lawyer, John Wolfson, who is representing the jailed father and brother.
On both July 3 and again on July 4 the lawyer, John Wolfson, said that Afshan had asked that charges be dropped. I was wrong to attribute Wolfson’s words to the potential victim. In an exchange with the sharp-eyed legal secretary, she told me:
“I have not been in contact with Ms. Azad. (If I were, I would give her the exact same warning you’re giving her). I simply smelled a rat yesterday when I read the report that she’d tried “three times” to retract her statement. My first reaction was exactly like yours – I believed it and I was horrified. But when I scrolled down the body of the text, I discovered that wasn’t Ms. Azad who’d said it – it was instead the attorney for her father and brother – Mr. John Wolfson. The lawyer for the potential honor murderers is quoted as saying:
“But lawyer John Wolfson, who is defending the father and son, insists the actress is already regretting her statement, and has tried to retract it through the Crown Prosecution Service three times.
He tells the Daily Express, “This is a desperately sad situation and she has never wanted her father and brother to be locked up. She has tried on three occasions to retract her statement and has pleaded with the Crown Prosecution Service not to proceed.
“I sincerely hope for the family’s sake that this can be quickly and happily resolved. My client and his father have already denied the charges and will maintain that plea.“
According to my reader, “This is the oldest (and dirtiest) trick in the legal world–a lawyer trying to save his client by destroying the veracity of the accuser. The lawyer for the father and brother is desperate; his clients are facing huge jail sentences for attempted murder. The lawyer’s only hope is to make the accuser retract her statement–’oops! It was all a misunderstanding.’ Please don’t feel bad that you’ve been duped. I would have had the exact same reaction as you—had it not been for the fact that I’ve been a legal secretary for decades.
“Sadly, Ms. Chesler, you ARE accurate in pointing out that victims of abuse often plead for mercy for their abusers. You are also sadly accurate in revealing that those abusers inevitably reward their victim’s mercy with murder. Last but not least, you are sadly accurate in saying that Ms. Azad can never go home. So long as her family clings to the ‘religion of peace’, they will do their best to kill her – and they will do so with no remorse or shame.
“Ms. Chesler, your advice to Ms. Azad is spot on. Bless you for that. She should contact Diana Nammi for help. You are also sadly, totally accurate in telling Ms. Azad that she can never go home again.”
I am sorry to have misled my readers and exceptionally sorry if my piece has caused Afshan herself the slightest sorrow.
1) Many thanks to Carolyn for catching this thing and pointing it out to you and your readers.
2) At first, I wanted to ask you to write something like this, but said to myselt “who am I to ask her to do anything”.
3) That you did by yourself speaks of courage and a level of honesty not often seen in the vilipendiated media.
Note: For the meaning of “vilipendiated”, please ask Bill O’Reilly
That poor girl … pretty soon, the lawyer’s going to be telling us that she feels so bad about foiling their attempt at murdering her that she’s going to stand in front of as target, hand them a rifle, and give them another chance at it to make them feel better.
There’s an old Jewish expression: Those who would be kind to the cruel will end up being cruel to the kind.Stick to your guns, Ms. Azad!
You got that right … I guess 800 years of being dumped on gave them some pretty trenchant insights into human character.
The hardest thing to do is leave the family she grew up with. But she is luckier then most she has a successful career. She can move & start over come to the states. She can retire from acting and start a new career. Whatever choices she makes I hope she realizes the danger she is in and leave her father & brother in jail. I am pretty sure she could produce a story of her life to help warn other women & the western world about honor or honour killings. I wish her all the best
Phyllis, Don’t feel bad. Everyone makes mistakes. It’s part of being human. The important thing is, you drew attention to the plight of poor Afshan, an innocent young woman – another victim of Islamic religious hate and violence who desperately needs the protection of police and society.
A witch who can say “sorry’! I didn’t know such things existed in the magical world! If only they existed in the real world, Dr. Chesler. Your candor in admitting an error is most refreshing in journalism and writing. If only it were more common!
I do most sincerely hope that this is the true state of affairs, and that Ms Azad has NEVER called for the case to be dropped (for all we know, the lawyer has been told by his Muslim male clients that this is what she said, and has swallowed the lie…the propensity of Muslims for telling barefaced lies is enormous…I wouldn’t put it past them, even, to have arranged for some other female in the clan to ring Mr Wolfson up, *pretending* to be Ms Azad.) Only *her*, Afshan’s, lawyer can confirm or deny this story.
I am praying for Ms Azad. I am praying that the little seeds dropped into her subconscious by the ‘Harry Potter’ books – seeds that include Dumbledore’s telling the assembled students, after Cedric Digory has been murdered by Voldemort, that if they are ever faced with the choice ‘between what is right, and what is easy’, that they must remember Cedric Digory – will spring to life and help her …to choose what is right, even at risk of her life, rather than the ‘easy’ path of submission to fear (which will mean her death, in any case). Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali standing in the railway station in Germany, about to choose whether to follow the path to an arranged marriage in Canada, or to defy her family and take a train to the Netherlands, to shape her own life, to **choose** ‘like a person in a book’ (that is, like the people in the Western fairy tales and adventure novels she’d read in Kenya), Afshan faces a dramatic choice between falsehood and truth, betwen returning to slavery or stepping out into freedom.
Ms Azad must choose – between what is ‘easy’ (to give in to fear, and submit to the murderous demands of Islam) and what is objectively, morally right, that is, to be faithful to her lover (and she did refuse to give him up, even when her father and brother were threatening her and beating her), and to be faithful to the truth, even when it means breaking with her family and facing the fact that her brother and father tried to kill her and still intend to kill her.
I hope she sees the parallel between herself and, say, Snape, or Regulus Black: people who, at the risk of their lives, broke with the Death Eaters. She is being asked to turn from darkness toward Light, from slavery toward Freedom, from falsehood toward Truth. And it will be as dangerous as it would be for any Death Eater to choose to stop serving Lord Voldemort.
This drama is real.
And if she were in front of me now, I would say to her: dear little Afshan, yes, you are surrounded by darkness and fear, but there is a *real* Patronus Charm, a real ‘Expecto Patronum!’ and it begins like this, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name..”. Or you could just say -’Jesus, HELP!”
Dude, she is a CHILD who has a BOYFRIEND, not a lover, and girls are allowed to have a couple boyfriends before settling down. If they are meant to be together, then I hope their relationship does well, but jeez, she’s a damn KID and she’s already in mortal danger of being slaughtered by her insane family. Give her a freakin break, okay? It’s not going to do her any good to claim that she belongs to a new male when the whole concept of “this MY woman!” is what’s in danger of killing her.
The “easy” way out? To let herself be murdered? There is no “easy” way here, stop dramatizing it and turning her peril into an ideological brick for your personal philosophical fortress. What this kid needs is to survive and be protected from her nutball relatives — who already think that loyalty to a male by his rules is the be-all and end-all of female existence, even for a little kid.
I have always liked Walid Shoebat’s description of the Muslim stance towards non-Muslims: “You will say Islam is a religion of peace or we will kill you!”