A 16-year-old girl is dead and her father has been charged with murder after an attack in a Mississauga home.
Aqsa Parvez, a student at Applewood Heights Secondary School, had been on life support in hospital since yesterday morning.
Police went to the family's two-storey home on Longhorn Trail about 8 a.m. yesterday after receiving a 911 call in which a man allegedly claimed to have killed his daughter.
Paramedics found Aqsa with a faint pulse and rushed her to hospital. She was later transferred to a Toronto hospital and placed on life support.
Peel police said this morning that she died overnight.
Friends at the victim’s school said she feared her father and had argued over her desire to shun the hijab, a traditional shoulder-length head scarf worn by females in devout Muslim families.
Homicide investigators had been standing by, as it soon became clear the young girl wouldn't survive the attack.
Muhammad Parvez, 57, has been remanded in custody and was to make his first court appearance today in a Brampton court.
The victim's brother, 26-year-old Waqas Parvez, was also arrested on a charge of obstructing police.
Neighbours described the family as very private and said several members from three generations have lived in the two-storey home, near Hurontario St. and Eglinton Ave., for just over two years.
School chums say Aqsa had been arguing with her family for months over whether she should wear the hijab.
Pal Ebonie Mitchell, 16, and other friends said Aqsa still wore the hijab to school last year, but rebelled against dressing in it this fall.
They said she would leave home wearing the traditional garment and loose clothing, but would often change into tighter garments at school.
She would change back for the bus trip home.
"Sometimes she even changed her whole outfit in the washroom at school," Mitchell said.
The teen was known to her classmates and Facebook friends as Axa. She posted several pictures of herself on the website in colourful clothes and accessories.
At Aqsa's high school, friends gathered in groups yesterday, struggling to come to grips with what happened and lamenting how she had quarrelled with her father to the point that she recently moved out to live with a friend.
"She said she was always scared of her dad, she was always scared of her brother ... and she's not scared of nobody," said classmate Ashley Garbutt, 16.
"She didn't want to go home ... to the point where she actually wanted to go to shelters."
Friends said the root of her problems was a desire to blend in with friends at school, to wear the fashionable clothes she liked to buy on trips to Toronto's garment district, where she went with friends just last month.
"She liked fashion," said Mitchell. "We went to different stores; she was shopping; she bought lots of clothes."
"She loved clothes, she loved shopping and she loved taking pictures of herself," classmate Dominiquia Holmes-Thompson, 16, said outside the school as friends sobbed at the news.
"She just wanted to show her beauty. She just wanted freedom, freedom from her parents."
"She just wanted to dress like us, just like a normal person," said Holmes-Thompson.
"She was a very kind person, she was really nice; everybody loved her."
Friend Shianne Phillips, 16, said she last spoke with Aqsa on Friday.
"She was crying and she was like ‘I'm really scared to go home. I don't know what I'm going to do.' And that was it," Phillips said.
Comment:
Another sad example of conflicting cultures and values. This is a very common dilemma which Muslim families face living in the west and some resort to violence out of sheer frustration as this case shows.
The way forward is to teach children from an early age about the Islamic beliefs and teachings and for girls to wear the hijab from an early age so that they understand and get used to wearing it. Also where possible to send the children to Islamic schools or predominantly Muslim ones where wearing the Islamic dress code is seen as normal as opposed to majority non-Muslim schools where the pressure is greater to follow the freedom lifestyle and ignore the commands of Allah swt.
Friends and classmates of a 16-year-old girl who police say was murdered by her devout Muslim father in a Toronto suburb told local media Tuesday she was killed for not wearing a hijab.
Police said in a statement they received an emergency call at 7:55 am local time Monday from "a man who indicated that he had just killed his daughter."
The victim, Aqsa Parvez, was "rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries, but tragically passed away late last night."
Her father, Muhammad Parvez, 57, was arrested at the scene and will be formally charged with murder when he appears in court Wednesday, said police.
The girl's friends, meanwhile, told local media she was having trouble at home because she did not conform to the family's religious beliefs and refused to wear a traditional Islamic head scarf, or hijab.
"She wanted to go different ways than her family wanted to go, and she wanted to make her own path, but he (her father) wouldn't let her," one of her classmates told public broadcaster CBC.
"She loved clothes," another of her friends, Dominiquia Holmes-Thompson, told the daily Toronto Star. "She just wanted to show her beauty ... She just wanted to dress like us, just like a normal person."
According to her friends, Aqsa had worn the hijab at school last year, but rebelled in recent months.
They said she would leave home wearing a hijab and loose-fitting clothes, but would take off her head scarf and change into tighter garments at school, then change back before going home at the end of the day.
The victim's 26 year-old brother was also charged with obstructing police in the investigation.
Father says killed daughter in Canadian hijab case
"TORONTO (Reuters) - A Canadian teenager who was said to have clashed with her father about whether she should wear a traditional Muslim head scarf died of injuries late on Monday, and her father told police he had killed her.
Aqsa Parvez, 16, was found without a pulse in her home in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga earlier on Monday. She was resuscitated by paramedics, treated at two hospitals, and later succumbed to her injuries, police said on Tuesday.
Her father, 57-year-old Muhammad Parvez, has been charged with murder and was remanded back into custody after his first court appearance early on Tuesday.
"There was a 911 call placed by a man who indicated that he had just killed his daughter," Jodi Dawson, a constable with Peel Regional Police, told Reuters. "Everything else is evidentiary in nature and the investigation is in its preliminary stages at this point."
The victim's brother, Waqas Parvez, 26, was arrested and charged with obstructing police.
The story was on the front pages of Canadian newspapers on Tuesday. The newspapers quoted friends and schoolmates of the victim as saying she argued with her father over wearing a hijab, the traditional head scarf worn by Muslim females.
Photos of the teen retrieved from a social networking Web site show her in Western dress with her long dark hair loose.
"She was always scared of her dad, she was always scared of her brother," the Toronto Star quoted a classmate as saying.
Others were quoted as saying the girl wore traditional Muslim dress when leaving the house in the morning, but would change into other clothes in school washrooms.
Dawson said investigators will likely speak to the victim's schoolmates. The father will return for a bail hearing on Wednesday."
Re: Father charged with murdering daughter for not wearing hijab
no wonder we/Islam and everything associated with us are hated.I am prepare to bet this man came from a rural background.it gives a real bad impression of other devout Muslims who aren't retarded like him.
Another example of the western press painting islam in a bad light!
c'mon you should know we all don't think like that.
Last edited by Bittersteel; 12-15-2007 at 12:21 PM.
Re: Father charged with murdering daughter for not wearing hijab
This is another sad example of what happens when Muslim children are left to associate with kuffaar company and society. The girl was wrong, very wrong but i blame it on the parents that she was left to go this way. They left her to mix with kuffaar and bad society especially if it was Muslims that were the bad influence.
However killing her is definitely very wrong! How can he?! He is to blame for her going this way in the first place but even if he wasnt, killing is not to be accepted. This is totally wrong. Further more a 'devote' Muslim will never behave in such a manner.
Re: Father charged with murdering daughter for not wearing hijab
format_quote Originally Posted by Aziz
no wonder we/Islam and everything associated with us are hated.I am prepare to bet this man came from a rural background.it gives a real bad impression of other devout Muslims who aren't retarded like him.
c'mon you should know we all don't think like that.
Of course we don't, but "bad press" is a frequent excuse of many Muslims.
Re: Father charged with murdering daughter for not wearing hijab
Of course we don't, but "bad press" is a frequent excuse of many Muslims.
ahh true which give a further bad impression of us.seriously conservative Muslims shouldn't immigrate to liberal western countries if they have such problems.
Re: Father charged with murdering daughter for not wearing hijab
format_quote Originally Posted by wilberhum
Now that is sad if you think children need to be isolated from the rest of the world.
I said kuffaar company. Meaning that their influence affects the children. The likes and dislikes of the kuffar kids rub off onto the Muslim's as well as peer pressure, in her case fashion was one of them. She didnt want to dress in her own cultural way but that of which those around her dressed in, believing that she looked better in that.
Re: Father charged with murdering daughter for not wearing hijab
format_quote Originally Posted by Sabeeha
I said kuffaar company. Meaning that their influence affects the children. The likes and dislikes of the kuffar kids rub off onto the Muslim's as well as peer pressure, in her case fashion was one of them. She didnt want to dress in her own cultural way but that of which those around her dressed in, believing that she looked better in that.
If you have problems with mulims mixing with kufaars tell them not to come to non muslim countries.If you want to live only in muslim community, you should stay where you already are.
This country is dying because of a lack of men, not a lack of programs.
Re: Father charged with murdering daughter for not wearing hijab
Very sad story and tragic story
i feel if she had the right guidance and teachings of islam there would never have been an issue of wearing the hijab..
one comment in the story however really angered me :-
"She just wanted to dress like us, just like a normal person," said Holmes-Thompson.
'like a normal person' are her friends stating that being a muslim is 'not normal' ?!
i feel education is vital in regards to how communities understand each other
Re: Father charged with murdering daughter for not wearing hijab
format_quote Originally Posted by Aaron85
If you have problems with mulims mixing with kufaars tell them not to come to non muslim countries.If you want to live only in muslim community, you should stay where you already are.
I do not have problems kuffaar, to a certain extent. The point i'm trying to drive at is that parents should know to what extent their children are to be allowed to mix with the kuffaar. If the child is getting influenced way too much wrongly then they should take steps to curb it and teach them rightly, let them into Muslim company more, but thats away from topic. This girl fell waaay too much into the kuffaar habits and likes. But how will she get to being like this? Only if she were exposed to it and not much Islamicaly. But of course theres is always the chance that she was and still didnt wan to follow. Allah Ta'aala Knows Best. But the father still didnt have the right to kill her.
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