Peaceful Families Project staff and board with heavy hearts respectfully uplift the life of Sister Sadia Manzoor, her mother and daughter Khadija, as victims of Domestic Violence homicide in the Muslim community. While we mourn the horrific deaths of these three beautiful souls and pray for their acceptance in Jannah, we also rededicate ourselves to continue in our sacred work of spreading awareness, offering options and creating resources for all those suffering domestic violence in our community.
The sequence of events in the life of Sister Sadia is sadly not uncommon. The threat of serious violence is most elevated tragically when victims of domestic violence finally seek a path to end their suffering. In this case, as in so many others, the perpetrator increased the intensity and lethality of his actions, with little protection provided to the victims, until he took their lives and his own.
This was a Muslim family, a teacher in a Muslim School, and we as Muslims must address this atrocity. We are obligated to react as we are commanded in our Qur’an, to fight oppression wherever it is found and to always offer protection to the vulnerable. We cannot continue to look away and blame “others”. What we owe to Sister Sadia, her mother and daughter as well as the countless other victims is the recognition of their lives and stories as a truth in our community that must be addressed and the violence within our Muslim homes eliminated completely.
إِنَّا ِلِلَّٰهِ وَإِنَّا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعُونَ
Surely we belong to Allah and to him we shall return.
The sequence of events in the life of Sister Sadia is sadly not uncommon. The threat of serious violence is most elevated tragically when victims of domestic violence finally seek a path to end their suffering. In this case, as in so many others, the perpetrator increased the intensity and lethality of his actions, with little protection provided to the victims, until he took their lives and his own.
This was a Muslim family, a teacher in a Muslim School, and we as Muslims must address this atrocity. We are obligated to react as we are commanded in our Qur’an, to fight oppression wherever it is found and to always offer protection to the vulnerable. We cannot continue to look away and blame “others”. What we owe to Sister Sadia, her mother and daughter as well as the countless other victims is the recognition of their lives and stories as a truth in our community that must be addressed and the violence within our Muslim homes eliminated completely.
إِنَّا ِلِلَّٰهِ وَإِنَّا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعُونَ
Surely we belong to Allah and to him we shall return.