Afshan Azad, of "Harry Potter" fame.
By Jason Apuzzo. Afshan Azad, the British actress best known for her role as Padma Patil in the “Harry Potter” films, has accused her Islamic father and brother of trying to kill her. Azad is claiming she was attacked because her father and brother apparently didn’t like her boyfriend, whom she refused to stop seeing. She claims she was left beaten and bruised. According to CNN the family is Muslim, and of Bengali descent.
Her father Abdul Azad, 54, and brother Ashraf Azad, 28, have been arrested and charged with threatening to kill her. Ashraf Azad is also accused of assaulting his sister causing her actual bodily harm.
As part of their bail conditions, the two men are required to abide by a curfew, and not travel to London or contact an unnamed man. You can read more about this on the Fox News website.
This is incredibly disgusting behavior, and there should be an immediate condemnation from the Hollywood filmmaking community. As of right now, though, I’m not seeing this story mentioned anywhere in the trades. Why do I think I know why?
LFM readers have probably noticed that we spend a lot of time here covering what might be termed ‘women’s issues,’ or otherwise spotlighting women in film and the media. One of the reasons we do this is because the battle lines in our current War on Terror are different from where they were, for example, during the Cold War. The War on Terror is as much a war over the freedoms of women as anything else, and these freedoms need to be asserted over and over again. These freedoms include, but are obviously not limited to, the right of women to make choices about their romantic and sexual lives.
We will continue to follow this story as it unfolds. By the way: we’d love to hear from all you readers right now who thought Sex and the City 2 was ‘unfair’ in its portrayal of women in Islamic society. In the comments section of her review of Sex and the City 2, Govindini debated several readers (one a Muslim female, another a Western feminist) on this point … and we’d love to hear back from these gals now about how tolerant and open Islamic society is toward women and their ambitions.
Posted on July 2nd, 2010 at 10:32am.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mr. K. Mr. K said: RT @LibertasFilmMag: Muslim "Harry Potter" Actress Assaulted by Father, Brother … See: http://bit.ly/bsPSLM [...]
This is a very sad story to read. There really needs to be a dialogue in the Muslim community about their problems with domestic violence. While domestic violence of this sort sadly exists everywhere, there is a disturbing amount of it in the Muslim community and too many Western commentators – especially the feminists- are silent about if for fear of PC-concerns.
I’m amazed that the media is even reporting that this young woman comes from a Muslim family. Isn’t that racist/Islamophobic of them?
A religion of peace.
I hope there is someone to care for this young lady. I am appalled by this news. Didn’t her father and brother think that people were going to find out if they tried to kill her? Or were they just so enraged over her refusal to bend to their will that they didn’t care?
I wonder if any of this has to do with jealousy over her movie success and the fact that she is probably making more money than them. It’s been pretty well documented how Islamic societies try to suppress women’s economic opportunities. I’m horrified that this young actress would have to suffer through this.
And imagine for a moment the girls who aren’t stars in Harry Potter films, who receive this same kind of treatment. It’s extremely ugly behavior, and British society needs to come down on these guys like a ton of bricks. Thanks for commenting, Prehistoric, and please keep coming back to LFM.
I wonder if the entertainment media will rush to cover this story – or is it too inconvenient for their liberal-PC view of Islam? Maybe Oliver Stone can make a movie about how Islam is really in the right for treating women like this.
And if they were in control of this country – the school system, government, etc what do you think they would be doing here? Wake u people.