Background and Importance
Nabra Hassanen was a beautiful Muslim American 17-year old high school student from Reston, Virginia. On June 18, 2017, during the month of Ramadan, she was sexually assaulted and killed. Her death was classified as an act of road rage and not a hate crime because there was not enough “evidence.”
The perpetrator was Darwin Martinez Torres, an at the time 22-year old undocumented immigrant, who recently admitted his wrongs after being given an opportunity to avoid the death penalty by answering questions about this specific case. He is noted for being under the influence (13 to 16 alcoholic beverages) and having a low IQ due to trauma from his childhood upbringing in El Salvador. In an article in The Washington Post, Martinez Torres’s attorneys explain how “Darwin is the most impaired defendant we have ever represented at trial.”
A large part of Hassanen’s story is her parents and their reaction. To no surprise, her father is distraught after this incident. In an interview, he confidently expresses that Martinez Torres killed her daughter “because she’s a Muslim.” He asks...
“Why was he running behind the kids wearing Islamic clothes with a baseball stick? Why, when my daughter fell down, why did he hit her? For what?”
He is confident that his daughter was targeted because of her religious identity and he refuses to let that go. However, we also must consider that her father was the only active voice that was highlighted in any article.
We need to know Hasssanen’s story because her story has radiated fear for the entire Muslim community. Hassanen was wearing a hijab, or headscarf, with a group of other Muslim women who were also all wearing hijabs when they were attacked. After this incident, individuals who identify as Muslim, and are easily identifiable by their clothing and accessories, will be afraid to be visible in their faith and identity. Despite the intentions of the crime and whether or not Martinez Torres was targeting Hassanen and her friends because of their faith, his action has caused harm to the Muslim community and fueled Islamaphobia.
Tara Isabella Burton on Vox expresses this idea that...
“regardless of motivation, Hassanen’s death, the anguished response of her family, and the impassioned response of the wider Muslim and ally world on social media, reflects a fever pitch of tensions between Muslim communities and those who see the visible presence of Muslims in public space as an affront to their idea of what it is to be American.”
We need to bring light to the injustice.
Relevance To Today
Through most of my research over Hassanen’s case, there was a lot of talk about the effects on the Muslim community. This is definitely true and it should not be ignored. However, there was never discussion over her place as a woman. Especially when Martinez Torres admitted that he sexually assaulted her, no one thought twice about how Hassanen’s gender might play into this case.
Hassanen’s story is important for women of color to know. For the most part, it was relatively difficult to find information on her case and even more difficult to find any information about the injustice done against Asian women of color. The fact of the matter is, is that many women of color are ignored, even when these tragic things happen to them. Even with the research that I did find, most of the articles still talked more about Martinez Torres than they did about Hassanen’s story and her life. The only thing that is posted about her is this tragic incident that occurred and not the endless awards and achievements that most likely outlined her life.
Women of color are ignored in our society. They are never seen as whole and Hassanen’s story only exemplifies that. It is essential that we are holistically viewing women of color for all that they are and their unique experiences, which is something that does not happen now.
Relevance to Class
A common theme that we have talked about in this entire semester is the idea of women of color being in this “double bind,” a term coined by bell hooks, in which women of color are having to navigate their racial and cultural background with their identity as a woman. Hassanen has only been looked at for her identity as an individual who identifies as Muslim, and less about her experience as a woman or as a woman of color. The way that Hassanen’s case was framed, especially with the fact that they are not categorizing this as a hate crime, continues to force invisibility in communities of color, especially for Asian and Arab American women.
When Hassanen’s salient identity as a Muslim-American women is erased through a “lack of evidence,” we continue to enforce this erasure of Asian and Arab American women history. When I was researching someone to do this project on, I barely could find anything. This is not because these forms of injustice don’t happen, but because they are continuously erased. Mitsuye Yamada talks about this idea of “invisibility” and how although we are a visible minority, we are often “invisible” because we are stereotyped to be passive and complacent.
This invisibility is somehow intertwined with this great visibility that exists especially in the Muslim American community – with Islamic clothing and headscarves, it can be easy to sight someone who might identify in this community. This separates these individuals from American norms, which is an idea that Susan Muaddi Darraj talks about. Darraj mentions how she felt “emotionally torn” between her Muslim culture and background with the white Western world of feminism she was living in. Why is there a separation between being American and being Muslim? Why is being Muslim-American considered an oxymoron? Even in the way that articles talk about Hassanen, we “other” her into this isolated community so separated from Americans.
In conclusion, Hassanen’s case is a perfect example how our continuous exclusion of women of color leads to acts of state violence and injustice towards them. We need to do better to foster the diversity that exists in America to provide justice to women of color who had been wronged since the start of our country.
Actions for Change
In Tara Isabella Burton’s article, she states that the “FBI reports between 6,000 and 10,000 hate crimes annually, while a survey-based approach by the U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics focusing on victim perception suggests that the number could be as high as 260,000.” In the same article, she pulls a definition of a hate crime that is defined as something that “functions both as a legal, prosecutable category and, no less importantly, as a symbolically potent indicator of a culture of violence and suspicion.” It is difficult to state an event as a hate crime. However, the fact that Hassanen’s case was classified as an act of road rage, despite it’s harm to the Muslim community, is not providing her case justice.
Lieutenant Bryan Holland, who was part of Hassanen’s case, said that there was not enough evidence for it to be considered a hate crime because “there was no indication of any racial slurs or any back-and-forth other than a verbal argument.” The fact that this is the single excuse he could use to defend his notions is embarrassing and proves the lack of education and motivation to become educated about hate crimes and the effects of what Hassanen’s killing did for the Muslim community, especially in the surrounding Virginia area. To move forward, there needs to be major changes to hate crime legislation to truly encompass identity-based motivated crimes that stem from a place of hatred and harm towards a specific community.
There just needs to be more done to provide justice to women of color who are affected by the unjust system that we are living in.
References:
"Man who killed Nabra Hassanen sentenced to life in prison" by Justin Jouvenal, The Washington Post
"Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster" by Mitsuye Yamada
"It's Not an Oxymoron: The Search for an Arab Feminism" by Susan Darraj