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Murder of Iraqi Woman in California Appears Motivated by Hate
Note near body said "go back to your country"; followed earlier threats to family
Shaima Alawadi, 32 and a mother of five, has died after being taken off life support Saturday at a hospital in San Diego County, various media report today. She had be discovered severely beaten in her home by her daughter, 17 year old ..., on Wednesday. A note was discovered nearby that said "go back to your country".
Shaima Alawadi, 32 and a mother of five, has died after being taken off life support Saturday at a hospital in San Diego County. Alawadi was an Iraqi who had emigrated to the United States in the mid-nineties, but only recently relocated to the town of El Cajon in the San Diego area. El Cajon is home to some 40,000 Iraqi immigrants, the second largest such community in the United States after Detroit. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the murder has all the indications of and should be treated like a 'hate crime'.
* * *
According to local CNN affiliate KGTV News 10, in El Cajon, California:
Investigators confirmed late Friday a threatening note was found next to the victim. The victim’s family said that note was the second one left at the home in the last week.
Al Himidi said, "A week ago they left a letter saying this is our country not yours you terrorist, and so my mom ignored that thinking it was just kids playing a prank. But the day they hit her, they left another note again, and it said the same thing."
Al Himidi told 10News nothing was stolen from the home, and the only motive must have been hate.
Al Awadi immigrated to the United States from Iraq nearly 20-years-ago.
* * *
CNN adds:
Hanif Mohebi, executive director of CAIR's San Diego chapter, said the family came to the United States from Iraq in the mid-1990s. He did not know when they moved to El Cajon, which has one of the nation's largest Iraqi community.
Alawadi and her husband have three daughters and two sons, ranging in age from 8 to 17, Mohebi said.
Fatima Al Himidi said nothing was stolen from the house, leading her to believe the attack on her mother motivated by hate.
"Why did you take my mother away from me? You took my best friend away from me," she said, choking with tears, in an interview with CNN affiliate KUSI. "Why? Why did you do it? I want to know. Answer me that."
Police would not say whether they were treating the case as a hate crime, saying they were "exploring all aspects of this investigation."
"Evidence thus far leads us to believe this is an isolated incident," Coit said in a statement.
But social media users quickly compared Alawadi's death to that of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, calling both hate crimes, and drawing a parallel between a hijab and a hoodie.
Martin was killed last month as he walked back to his father's fiancee's house in Sanford, Florida, after a trip to the convenience store. Police say he was shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who said he was acting in self-defense and has not been charged.
The teen was unarmed, carrying a bag of Skittles candy and an iced tea, and was wearing a hoodie.
On Sunday morning, the authors of the parenting blog, Momstrology, tweeted: "A teen murdered for wearing hooded sweater. An Iraqi woman beaten to death for wearing a head scarf. Our hearts ache for you."
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51 Comments so far
Show AllI am appalled that they say 'appears motivated' hate crime. How disgusting. Obvious more like.
The note indicates planning, while the beating shows rage. If a hater did it, I would worry about more attacks. The Iraqi community should stay alert until they catch this person.
(They represent core values of the American psychosis)
They are core values of that MIRROR/reflexion of lies, coup d'etat, assassinations, invasions perpetrated WITHIN & in FAR AWAY LANDS, whether its the coward murder of an innocent Iraqi mother in the states, the murder/mutilation & disconnecting of the finger/trophy/ritual/crimes in Afghanistan, the hemorrhage of daily explosions in Iraq, the pathetic drone crimes in Pakistan, the torture, murder and killing of the olive tree, the child her innocence & future of Palestine, or the equally unforgivable coward hate crime in France of a Jewish child who had nothing to do with the injustice in Palestine. The obscene racist & hate murder & the complicity of local authorities of an African American child with a hood, A HOOD way more different than the one used to lynch his forefathers seventy years ago in Mississippi, & NOW Africa, Latin/south America, Asia. ALL symptoms of a malady, a disease called IMPERIALISM/CAPITALISM.
John Pilger was right about the wars, THE WAR WE DON'T SEA or do WE? Noami Klein was also right, a mountain with unfathomable resources they take, they implode from within, voilĂ Iraq, Libya open for business paul bremer, SHOCK DOCTRINE.
Instead they are dismantling all entities that educate, they are weakening all watchdogs, human right organizations, laws related to whistle blowers and the tempering with the judicial system for further control.
THEY ARE DISCONNECTING
Equally important suppressing repressing and oppressing the very life force, IMMUNE SYSTEM, NATURAL DEFENSES MECHANISMS protecting the societal body its dreams, aspirations, freedom of expression OCCUPY, a genuine mirror RISES AND RAISES ALL THE QUESTIONS ABOVE AUTHENTICALLY WITHOUT BIAS.
Short of allowing LIFE TO BREATH, the cracks in the mirror ABOVE will deepen, too many shocks, a split takes place laying the ground to fewer GROUNDS for all humans. There is an other way.
All is CONNECTED
WAKE UP.
Amerika has lost all moral bearing. Amerikans believe the little baby Jesus gave them the right to slaughter brown skinned people all over the world. Even black Americans believe this (as do Jewish Amerikans, but without the little baby Jesus part, they get theirs straight from Yahweh).
I find the greatest irony and sadness in the fact that black Amerikan "leaders" have marched in goose step with Amerika's war on the world after Amerika murdered Martin Luther King, Jr.
middleway57, the Empire will strike back. Unfortunately, many of its storm troopers will come from the same populations they attack. War -- The poor killing the poor for the benefit of the rich.
prime!
i must confess the phrase,
confused me a little, but perhaps the blame goes to my congnitive skills and not the writer.I think it does matter that journalist refrain from using any version of the verb "to be." Hummingbird in a post above said "prime." Google "eprime." You will get a wikipedia article that explains that "eprime" avoids any use of the verb "to be."
This form of English forces the speaker or writer to speak accurately. Instead of saying, "And then he was shot," the speaker might say "And then I shot him" or "And then the cop shot him."
If you use "to be" you can say 8 Afghan children were killed. Instead of saying US troops murdered 8 Afghan children, etc.
'Dear Common Dreams: Quit rewriting the news. Just provide stories as written by other journalists with the links to those stories. In the case of this article the opening paragraph written by "Common Dreams Staff" make it appear as if the daughter beat her mother, "She had be discovered severely beaten in her home by her daughter..."'
I think that as written, the sentence is ambiguous. The appropriate use of the comma would resolve the ambiguity:
She had be(en) discovered severely beaten, in her home by her daughter...
indicates that the daughter found the woman in her home, severely beaten.
She had be(en) discovered, severely beaten in her home by her daughter...
indicates that whoever discovered the woman, concluded that she had been severely beaten by her daughter in the woman's home.
She had be(en) discovered severely beaten, in her home by her daughter...
indicates that the woman was discovered in her home by her daughter, who found that the woman had been severely beaten.
John
But virtually all murders are hate crimes. We make such a blanket statement to illustrate a most crucial point. That virtually all people are most strongly influenced by elites. And elites are the tiny sliver of the population that are by far the most dangerous, due to their blatantly evil agenda and their incredible influence.
The elite agenda is by far the greatest cause of hate because the elites are by far the most evil segment of the population and they stand the most to gain by pitting the people against each other, dividing/conquering the people, to enslave them.
It is true that many a murder has been committed by people who are least influenced by elites. But MOST murders are MOSTLY caused by social ills created by elites to confuse/enslave the people.
And these are the preventable ones. And by making a controversial statement such as virtually all murders are hate crimes, I am trying to elicit the elite-inflamed tendency of the people to squabble amongst themselves and redirect that criticism at the elites, where it is most deserved. Because the fundamental inaccuracies of elite propaganda have the most monstrous impact.
The ultimate outcome of this process of changing our perception of the source of all societal ills toward elites should be the people directing all of their respect and reverence toward human nature and the whole of humanity and the biosphere, and denying it to the elite ego, and the deities, delusions, and distractions created by elites. This grand shift of the people's respect/reverence will do the most to empower the people to benefit themselves, because the magnitude of positivity in the whole of humanity is immense, while that of elites is grotesquely negative.
Science shows that inequality causes most social ills.
http://inequality.org/
The Spirit Level --
http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies/dp/1608193411/...
Any attempt to educate this person hits an absolutely closed mind.
Then, not long ago on CD there was a story, with film, about the FBI addressing groups, with the same message. Don't trust a Muslim, for he is likely to kill you in your sleep. Mosques are just terrorist training grounds. Then, the FBI denied it, saying it was just a mistake. However, apparently they are still doing it.
My guess is that this is a big money thing. This hate isn't peddled for free.
Most Muslims, like most Christians, most Buddhists, most Jews, most atheists, etc., want to have work to do, a home for their families, decent food on the table, clean water, a toilet that works, decent medical care and a chance to educate their children.
Muslims do not hate us, but like most of us, are terribly hurt at what is going on in the world today.
If we still had a functioning Constitution and Bill of Rights, much of this stuff wouldn't even exist. However, since the advent of the mis-named, illegal and unconstitutional "Patriot Act" was substituted for the Constitution, hatred, bigotry, discrimination and violence have become the coin of the realm.
Now that we have the NDAA, the legalization of the Obama "hit list" and now, the EO signed by him last week giving him the "right" to declare martial law if he feels thwarted or worried, I have no idea if the Constitution will ever be resurrected.
That would, no doubt, be considered a threat to homeland security.
YET. Events in the "west" are making peace impossible with the constant demonization of Muslims.
The ironic part is that the note left by this woman's body called her a terrorist. Considering Iraq hasn't done anything remotely "terrorist" related to the US, and has been the victim of US aggression for 30 years, calling this woman a terrorist is idiotic.