Iftekhar Murtaza, a 22 year old Muslim whose family hails from Bangladesh, was courting a Hindu girl from a devoutly religious family who had voiced reservations about the relationship. The Dhanak family had gone so far as to forbid the relationship, influenced no doubt by recent stories of young Hindu women in England being forcibly converted by Muslim men and the general, perhaps unfair, perception of young Muslim men as prone to violence.
In essence, they tried to protect their daughter and in this case it cost them their lives.
Gateway Pundit examines the AP story’s unwillingness to deal honestly with the truth of the case. The OC Register examines the story from the Muslim family’s perspective, and finds blame with the victims.
The American media is afraid to call a religious murder by a Muslim what it is. A Jihadist act of terror designed to oppress Hindus, to make them afraid to object to their daughters marrying Muslims. This is a hate crime, and it should be treated as such.
I’m not sure what this site is all about, but i found it when i was looking up articles about Iftekhar…
Iftekhar Murtaza is a dear friend of mine which I have known for the past 4 or 5 years.. him and his family are very kind-hearted people and well known around the desi community.. I have hung out with Iftekhar over 100 times in the past few years, and I have never felt that my life was in danger.. he was the kindest guy.. he never started arguments or ever even faught with anyone.. he wasnt a extremest of islam.. and he did not care that his girlfriend was Hindu, he was still willing to accept her and her religion and marry her.. he was more americanized than islamic.. i hate how this article is written.. it is completely exploiding the truth and what really is going on here in Orange County..
and the article title, “muslim kills hindu family” is completely wrong.. there is not even enough evidence to convict him.. and truely, there isnt even enough evidence to hold him.. besides a few phone calls that happen to be two miles away from the incident.. and he was not even in Orange County that night.. and also he has plenty of friends in OC, so it is very possible for him to talk to a friend that lives down there.. either way.. i think it is very wrong what you guys have written with this article..
You really have no right stating “this is a hate crime” .. I know both families for years.. this is FAR from being a hate crime.. you can go ahead and look me up on facebook and read all the things that people have written to Iftekhar, Shayona and Karishmas pages that ACTUALLY KNOW THEM.. not random people accusing and just stating things like this article..
Hope you guys realise how wrong it is to exploid the truth or someones life without knowing the real cause or the actual people..
Thank you.
-Melissa Sapna Hossain
and i hope you guys dont delete my post just bc i disagree with what you have to say.. i am just speaking my mind and what i think is right.. it really hurts me to see how my friends situation is getting exploided by websites like this.. it is far from the truth.. and the truth will come out sooner or later.
thanks.
Well darlin’ I won’t delete your post. Only posts that that contain death threats or links to commercial sites are deleted around these parts. As to your defense of your friend, I’ll just say that your deciding that because someone is your “friend” he’s innocent because you could never be friends with a killer. Not you. Maybe someone else could be suckered in by a criminal, but not you. Riddle me this batgirl:
If Iftekhar wasn’t in Orange County that night, as you claim, how did he make a call two miles from the victims home a little before they died, which would place him in Orange County, no?
If he isn’t hiding something, why lie to the police as to his where abouts?
He may have been willing to “accept” her religion, but her family were not ready to accept his. And it was her family that was killed, not her. Why ignore these facts in your criticism?
I’m not exploiting your friends situation, any more than the newspapers that report it are. I am concerned about the rise in Islamist violence in the world, America specifically. Hindus have been targeted by Muslims frequently and there was just a hate crime in a school here in NYC where a Sikh was attacked because of religious differences. Not to mention the attacks world wide on Black Africans, Buddhists, Copts, Assyrians, Homosexuals etc. The world can’t ignore that a radical strain of Islam is gianing a foothold in our Muslim communities and causing conflict.
Your in a hard situation, I understand you’re trying to be loyal to someone you’re friendly with, but three people are dead. The police have fingered your friend and caught him fleeing the country with a one way ticket to Bangledesh. Loyalty is good, blind loyalty isn’t.
Your welcome to post here anytime. I won’t delete anything you have to say.
Thanks for your comments.
Hi there, I feel it’s important to post this before tomorrow’s deadline that will charge Iftekhar with a crime or not. I am a friend of his and I do not know what to think of this situation..it’s tough. However, you write that you wonder why he lied to police about his whereabouts that night…the only defence I can give on his behalf is…well, what if he was too afraid to say, yes, I was in the area, and then they hold him. He is obviously terrified that they would link him to the crime–he is, after all, 22 years old. He also could have been just driving through the region and happened to make a call near their Anaheim home. A two mile radius is a large radius, don’t you think? Also, as friend’s of his, it’s hard to beleive he would do something like this–very difficult to fathom. We hope that it is not true. He may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Also, when people visit sick grandparents, they don’t plan weeks in advanced–they plan such trips just days in advanced because one does not know when a family member is going to fall ill.
In addition, the media seems to concentrate very little on the Dhanak family. It is very possible that perhaps the father had shady links that got him out of jail. The father got out of jail after serving just 5 months of his sentence, says one article. He was supposed to be in jail for 2.5 years. Some people think that perhaps the father leaked some information, and that might be why he was targeted–as a revenge murder. Anyway, none of us know what happened on that evening; as his friends, we of course hope and pray he had no involvement whatsoever. If he did, we will learn to be more wary or the friendships we make.
Actually serving 5 months of a 2and 1/2 year bid is fairly common, especially in California where prisons are overcrowded so low risk offenders are released to make room for more hardened criminals.
Sorry kid, but I was 22 once and I had to talk to cops plenty. Only the guilty lie, and only the stupid lie to the police. If your friend was a stand up guy he’d want to clear himself as a suspect as soon as possible so the cops could move on.
Even nice guys can do horrible things if they think they’ve been pushed too hard. His girlfriend was taken from him by her family, then those people keeping him from the woman he loves ends up dead. It’s sad, especially for his friends, but sometimes, in fact most times, the simplest answer is the right one.
And the hardest to accept.
Rob Taylor,
I agree with you to some extent, the nicest of guys can come out of the blue and turn out to be something else. However, I agree with the two friends of Iftekhar also. I don’t know what to think about if Iftekhar did this crime or not, a lot of my family knows him and Karishma, and from what they say he wasn’t the type of person to do this. But then, again anyone can snap for whatever reason. The reason I felt the need to respond to this article is because it is made out to be some sort of hate crime. I agree that there have been differences between Hindus/Muslims to this date, but don’t classify this horrible crime as a hate crime because regardless of the religion of either parties it wasn’t that. If he is the culprit he didn’t do it because the family was Hindu, IF he did it then he did it because he was crazy, something snapped. As a hindu person married to a muslim person, I have learned to accept outlashes against my partner’s religion, but in turn I have also learned that you can’t judge one person because of all the fundamentialist (and yes I agree one may see more Muslim fundmentalist due to recent events). No religion is inhertently bad, God is only one and God didn’t tell any messenger that murder and crime is acceptable.
May God bless everyone involved in this situation, friends, family, and Iftekhar — Lets pray the cops have the right person and the mother recovers soon. Don’t expolit this situation (Rob or the media).
Wrong, on all counts.
A crime need not be particularly horrible to be a hate crime. That’s not how the law is written. In this case however the crime was outerageously brutal. That you can say that this crime wasn’t horrific, wasn’t an act of barbarity and inhuman savagery says something about scary about what you find acceptable. This was not a typical murder, this was an act of arrogant vengence over what this person thought he was slighted from poeple he felt superior to.
Giving my opinions about a case isn’t “exploiting” anything. Have you called CNN to tell them to stop “exploiting” the Iraq war? Have you written into to liberal blogs and asked them to stop “exploiting” politics? Or are you and your friends only concerned about the “exploitation” of Muslim murderers.
And indeed there are religions that are inherintly bad. The Ahgori come to mind, no? The ancient meso-American cultures sacrificed men, women and children, often unwilling prisoners of war, to bloodthirsty demon gods that were all too easy for Spanish explorers to mistake for demons. Certainly you’d agree that religon was inherintly bad, right? What about Satanism? Or Charles Manson’s cult?
Get real, there are plenty of schools of Islam that’d force you to convert on pain of death. There are plenty that preach the murder of those who cross you, and there are plenty of schools of Islam that are just plain bad. Look at what’s going on in Gaza and you can see that for yourself.
But I guess you wouldn’t mention the bloodshed and carnage there. After all you wouldn’t want to “exploit” it.
Interestingly enough the second suspect isn’t muslim. Guess now you’ll say this crime isn’t about religion but rather just a sick crime. I’m sure this guy is from a walk of Christianity…are all Christians bad too now? Does the bible preach killing people?
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1737492.php
Where does it say he’s not a Muslim? Why are you posting under different names?
Not being a Christian myself I have little interest in what the Bible does or does not say by the way, although I do recall hearing something once about not suffering a witch to live, and an eye for an eye. So the answer is yes, the Bible preaches killing people, yet oddly Christians are not flying airplanes into buildings or threatening the west over Salman Rushdie.
And when was the last time you heard of a devout Christian killing an entire family? How about strapping a bomb to himself? Cutting off a woman’s Clitoris?
Hmmm. It’s almost as if there is a social and cultural component to Islamic sociey that excuses violence.
Christians kill all the time. Forget the world trade center? Forget the unibomber? Forget the killings in Northern Ireland?
Oh yeah one more thing, no where did it say that Ifetkhar was a muslim. It’s just assumed by his name and his family, but he wasn’t a practicing muslim. So where do you get off calling this a Islamic killing or oppression? For all we know the Hindu younger sister was involved as well. This is not a terrorist act that’s the point. I am not a supporter or do I find it OK with all the things going on in the Middle East or the Islamic Fundmentalist killings.
Oh yeah one more thing, no where did it say that Ifetkhar was a muslim. It’s just assumed by his name and his family, but he wasn’t a practicing muslim. So where do you get off calling this a Islamic killing or oppression? For all we know the Hindu younger sister was involved as well. This is not a terrorist act that’s the point. I am not a supporter or do I find it OK with all the things going on in the Middle East or the Islamic Fundmentalist killings. Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, they have all strapped a bomb to themselves.and killed innocent people. Check out Indian and Sri Lanka. Why blame one religion when people of all religions engage in all sorts of killings.
Ifethkar is a Muslim, the news reports state it clearly. The family was Hindu and Ifetkhar was a Muslim so they didn’t approve of him dating their daughter. The article you linked to states that this is the case.
The unibomber was a devout Christian, news to me. But the World Trade Center?
Your saying Christians flew planes into the World Trade Center?
The IRA from which did most of the killings in Northern Ireland were a Marxist organization by the way. That, and not Catholicism, drove their violence.
Give me one example of a Buddhist detonating a suicide bomb in a crownd, or a Christian or Sikh.