A callous disregard for human life. Harleen Grewal is a Sikh name. In Islamic law, Muslim lives are explicitly worth more than those of non-Muslims. The Shafi’i Sharia manual Reliance of the Traveller dictates: “The indemnity for the death or injury of a woman is one-half the indemnity paid for a man. The indemnity paid for a Jew or Christian is one-third the indemnity paid for a Muslim. The indemnity paid for a Zoroastrian is one-fifteenth that of a Muslim.” (o4.9) Sikhs rank even lower, as they are not People of the Book.
The Shafi’i madhhab is not the only school of Islamic law that teaches this. The Iranian Shi’ite Sufi Sheikh Sultanhussein Tabandeh explains: “Thus if [a] Muslim commits adultery his punishment is 100 lashes, the shaving of his head, and one year of banishment. But if the man is not a Muslim and commits adultery with a Muslim woman his penalty is execution…Similarly if a Muslim deliberately murders another Muslim he falls under the law of retaliation and must by law be put to death by the next of kin. But if a non-Muslim who dies at the hand of a Muslim has by lifelong habit been a non-Muslim, the penalty of death is not valid. Instead the Muslim murderer must pay a fine and be punished with the lash….Since Islam regards non-Muslims as on a lower level of belief and conviction, if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim…then his punishment must not be the retaliatory death, since the faith and conviction he possesses is loftier than that of the man slain…Again, the penalties of a non-Muslim guilty of fornication with a Muslim woman are augmented because, in addition to the crime against morality, social duty and religion, he has committed sacrilege, in that he has disgraced a Muslim and thereby cast scorn upon the Muslims in general, and so must be executed….Islam and its peoples must be above the infidels, and never permit non-Muslims to acquire lordship over them.” — Sultanhussein Tabandeh, A Muslim Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
This kind of teaching inculcates attitudes. Did Saeed Ahmad leave Harleen Grewal to die because she was just a Sikh and just a woman, two groups he had been taught to despise as inferior?
“SEE IT: Driver hails cab as he abandons doomed passenger in blazing car on Brooklyn highway,” by Esha Ray, Dale W. Eisinger, and Larry McShane, New York Daily News, October 14, 2017 (thanks to John):
A Brooklyn man, his gal pal trapped inside the flaming wreckage of his nearby car, climbed coolly into a passing taxi as the helpless woman was left to die.
A chilling cellphone video obtained by WABC-TV News caught callous Saeed Ahmad hailing the yellow cab early Friday after escaping the roaring flames that killed passenger Harleen Grewal.
“Can I get a ride?” the manslaughter suspect asked casually as the raging fire from his luxury Infiniti 35G illuminated the 4 a.m. sky above the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
Stunned investigators found Grewal’s charred body in the passenger seat once the flames were extinguished.
“It’s unconscionable. How could you?” asked an outraged Van Christakos, 69, a Queens neighbor of the dead woman’s family. “Dial 911. Stay there! His actions are unconscionable. She was a sweetheart.”
The 25-year-old Grewal’s devastated family was sent reeling a second time by the release of the video one day after her death.
“I don’t even know what happened!” screamed her mother, Raj Grewal, outside their Astoria home. “That’s my child! She was an angel. She is an angel.”
Ahmad told police that he was dating Grewal, but friends said he was just an acquaintance who gave her a ride home.
Grewal’s boyfriend, Karan Singh Dhillon, was wracked with grief over her death.
“My baby didn’t deserve to go like this,” Dhillon wrote on Facebook. “The real good ones go away too quick.”
In an interview with the Daily News, Dhillon described Grewal as a selfless soul who always looked out for others.
“She would do anything for people,” he said. “She would give someone the clothes off her back. She would give someone food and go hungry.”
Death toll in Calif. wildfires reaches 36
Ahmad, 23, directed the cabbie to Maimonides Medical Center as he ignored the woman trapped inside the burning vehicle only a few yards away and fled the scene, the video showed.
The suspect, still hospitalized Saturday with burns, was charged with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, leaving the scene of a fatal accident, speeding and driving with a suspended license.
The suspect’s arraignment was pending as doctors treated him for burns on the neck, arms and legs. Ahmad’s brother pointed to the injuries as proof that Saeed tried to assist the victim.
“After trying to help her get out of the cars, his arms were burned, his neck was burned,” said Waheed Ahmad, 21. “You see a person die in front of you and you are in unimaginable pain, imagine what you would do.”
The video “is just causing us more pain,” Waheed said….