When Rejection Becomes a Death Sentence

Some months ago, I watched a fictional series that ended with a boy murdering a girl who had rejected him. It was a chilling portrayal. This boy—still a child, legally speaking—was unable to process rejection, stuck in online misogyny, and ultimately turned to violence. Being the father of a girl, I remember feeling disturbed but comforted by the thought that it was only a story.
That kind of thing doesn’t happen, I told myself. Not like that.

Yesterday, it did.

Seventeen-year-old Sana Yusuf, a social media influencer from Pakistan, was shot dead in her home. The killer was a 22-year-old man who, according to initial reports, had been persistently trying to contact her. She had said no—again and again—and he responded in the worst possible way. Suddenly, the fiction didn’t feel distant. It felt like a premonition.

What both the real and fictional cases reveal is not just tragedy, but a terrifyingly common architecture behind it—one we continue to ignore.

First, there is the crisis of male entitlement. Too many boys are raised to believe they are owed a woman’s attention, affection, or at least a response. When they don’t get it, the world feels like it has betrayed them. Their masculinity—so brittle and unchallenged—cracks under the weight of a simple “no.”

Second, there is the absence of emotional literacy. These young men, whether characters on screen or killers in real life, have no toolkit for rejection, no practice in self-restraint, no model of healthy masculinity. All they know is pursuit and conquest. When those fail, they default to violence—not always physical, but almost always destructive.

Third, there is digital radicalization. Online, you’ll find entire communities where rejection is weaponized, where women are blamed for existing outside male control, and where violence is justified as an act of restoring dignity. This is no longer a fringe phenomenon—it is the mainstream language of the digital underground.

Fourth, there is societal indifference. We do not teach our boys to respect autonomy. We still glorify persistence as romance. We still warn girls to “stay safe” rather than ask why they need protection in the first place.

And then, there is impunity. Whether online harassment or real-world threats, these warning signs are often dismissed.
He’s just obsessed, we say. Boys will be boys—until they aren’t boys anymore, until they have a gun, until someone dies.

However, perhaps the most chilling part of this tragedy is that, for some, Sana’s murder is not just excused—it is celebrated. In comment sections, WhatsApp groups, and anonymous social media handles, people are declaring that a fitna—a trial, a temptation—has been removed from the earth. That her death is a divine correction for social decay. That this is what should happen to a woman who crosses her limits. That influencers—especially women—are the root cause of society’s moral collapse.

This line of thought isn’t just cruel—it is dangerous. It weaponizes religion to sanctify violence, to legitimize murder, and to silence women’s existence. It reduces Islam—a religion of mercy, justice, and restraint—to a tool of patriarchal vengeance.

The irony is grotesque: men who speak of modesty while lacking any themselves, who claim to defend virtue while celebrating a young girl’s death.
Let us be clear: this is not piety. This is not righteousness. This is misogyny—cloaked in religion, dripping with blood.

This murder is not an isolated act of violence. It is part of a larger script—one written over generations, performed in homes, schools, phones, and films. A script where male desire is sacred, female rejection is sacrilege. And violence becomes the final punctuation mark.

This is not about love gone wrong. It is about control. It is about entitlement, and a failure of education—both moral and emotional.

We owe it to the girls, to our girls, to our daughters, and to all the women facing this across the world, to rewrite that script.

Fiction warned us. But we didn’t listen.
Now it’s real.

Will we finally act?

Sultan Ul Arifeen

The author is an academic, and research scholar.

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