Shaima Alawadi and One Million Hijabs?

Kassim Alhimidi

Daily Mail

A regular reader sent me this link as a follow-up to the murder of an Iraqi woman in San Diego, Shaima Alawadi, whom I blogged about last spring, my last entry noting that the police were no longer considering the killing a hate crime, supposedly motivated by hatred of Muslims, and evidence that she was filing for divorce before her death was raising suspicions in the minds of some about the husband, Kassim Alhimidi, who had left for Iraq to bury his wife. I didn't expect him to return, but here he is, arrested in America:

Eight months after begging the public for any information that could lead to finding his wife's killers, Kassim Alhimidi himself was arrested and charged with the homicide.

Police arrested Alhimidi, 48, of El Cajon, Calif., Thursday for the murder of his 32-year-old wife, Shaima Alawadi, according to ABC News affiliate KGO.

Alawadi's family called her death a hate crime after she was found beaten with a tire iron in her living room with a note calling her 'a terrorist.'

He is charged with first degree murder.

The death of the mother of five sent shockwaves through El Cajon, which is home to one of the nation's largest concentrations of Iraqi immigrants.

Shortly after the homicide, Alhimidi was in court making emotional pleas to his wife's 'killer' and begging for information.

This past March as his 15-year-old son Mohammed translated from Arabic, Alhimidi said: 'The main question we would like to ask is what are you getting out of this and why did you do it?'

Maybe he can answer that question now himself . . . if he's guilty. We have to keep in mind the American legal principle of "innocent until proven guilty." The article, however, "Husband of 'One Million Hijabs' victim arrested for beating her to death months after making emotional plea to find her 'racist' killer," appears in the Daily Mail (November 10, 2012), a British paper, and maybe British tabloids are not quite as committed to that principle, for the caption supplied with the photo above said:

Liar: Kassim Alhimidi himself was arrested and charged in his wife's death months after telling the press that it was a hate crime perpetrated by racists

Or perhaps the Daily Mail has some details not yet made public. If the paper is right, then I think we need one million hijabs doffed against honor killings . . .

Slaying of Shaima Alawadi: Not a 'Hate' Crime After All?

Fatima Al Himidi

Photo from Daily Mail

This won't be news to most readers since I first read the report late on Thursday evening. I would have posted it yesterday, but I had already composed a blog entry for posting, and because I'm blogging later than usual this Saturday morning, there are likely far better reports by now. I did notice the New York Times had an article yesterday. My source is a San Diego paper that I'd never heard of before. Anyway, according to Kristina Davis, writing for the U. T. San Diego, "Records hint Iraqi woman's death not a hate crime" (April 4, 2012) :

Shaima Alawadi . . . was apparently planning to divorce her husband and move to Texas when she was killed, [and her] 17-year-old daughter, Fatima Alhimidi, who called 911 to report the attack, was distraught over her [own] pending arranged marriage to a cousin . . . . [Moreover, a] search of Fatima's cellphone records shows that while she was being interviewed by investigators hours after the attack, someone sent the teen a text message that read, "The detective will find out tell them (can't) talk" . . . . Fatima [had] told [the] El Cajon police that she heard her mother squeal, and 10 seconds later heard the sound of glass breaking, the affidavit said. She told police she thought her mother had dropped a plate. Ten minutes later, the daughter discovered her mother lying unconscious on the ground, near a computer, and called 911 . . . . [Making matters more complex, a]neighbor reported seeing a skinny dark-skinned male running west from the area of Alawadi's house. He was described as being in his late teens to early 20s, 5 feet 7 inches tall, 150 pounds, wearing a dark blue or black hooded sweatshirt and carrying a brown doughnut-shaped cardboard box . . . . An autopsy noted the assault was "extremely violent" and showed Alawadi had at least six hits to the head, with at least four skull fractures. The injuries were possibly caused by an object similar to a tire iron, with a striking edge that is narrow and made of a hard material, according to the records . . . . [Oddly, the] sheriff's crime lab determined [that] a threatening handwritten note found near the victim was a copy, not the original . . . . During a search of the home and the couple's vehicles in the hours after the attack, police found court paperwork to file for divorce in Alawadi's Ford Explorer. The packet was not filled out, but a form requesting a court fee waiver was filled out in handwriting with Alawadi's name, address and phone number . . . . Police also searched computers, cellphones and other devices . . . . Investigators also learned of a previous police contact with Fatima . . . . [On the third of November 2011, the] police found Fatima with a 21-year-old man after responding to a report of two people possibly having sex in a car . . . . Officers called her mother, who came to the location and picked up the girl. As they were driving away, Fatima said, "I love you, mom," before jumping out of the vehicle onto Mollison Avenue at 35 mph [and] was taken to a hospital with several injuries, including a possible broken arm. She refused to talk to police at the hospital but reportedly told paramedics and hospital staff that she was being forced to marry her cousin and didn't want to. [But] Rawnaq Yacub, the man in the incident, told U-T San Diego Wednesday that police interviewed him after the slaying and some of his clothes were taken from the home he shares with his family. He said he has no connection to the crime . . . . [and] described Fatima as a "best friend" and said there is no romantic relationship. He and Fatima were only talking in the car when police contacted them five months ago, he said . . . . [The daughter,] her father and a brother flew to Iraq last week for Alawadi's funeral on Saturday and planned to stay for two weeks, a family friend said.

I don't usually quote so extensively, but this is an important point to get correct, namely, whether this is a hate crime or an honor killing. From this report, I would have thought the police to be investigating two possible angles, the father (due to the impending divorce) and the daughter (due to the boyfriend). However, the police allowed both of them to leave the US for Alawadi's funeral in Iraq, so I'm guessing that the actual police investigation is focused upon the daughter's 'boyfriend.' Yet, I'm still surprised that the daughter and father were allowed to leave the US.

Alawadi's death, at any rate, looks much less like a hate crime . . .

Death of Shaima Alawadi: Jump to no conclusions . . .

Shaima Alawadi

Al Arabiya News

An Iraqi-American woman was murdered recently in San Diego, and the case is garnering a lot of attention, but some Muslims and non-Muslims are too quickly jumping to conclusions, a number of the former (along with some non-Muslims, let it be noted) citing Islamophobia and a number of the latter (along with some Muslims, perhaps) claiming an honor killing.

Those citing Islamophobia point to a note left with the dying woman, the message stating words to the effect of 'Go back where you came from, you terrorist!' If confirmed as authentic, this note would make the attack a crime motivated by hate grounded in prejudice, what is sometimes labeled a hate crime.

Those claiming an honor killing point out that the glass door through which the murderer presumably entered appears smashed from the inside since the shards are scattered out over the grass outside, and they add that the murderer's note is therefore a cover-up. They also think that the words of the seventeen-year-old daughter, who is said to have discovered her dying mother, sound insincere, but I'm not very good at evaluating that sort of thing, so judge for yourself.

We'll have to wait for the official police report to learn all of the facts, but those claiming that Shaima Alwadi's death is an honor killing point to something else as well, an Al Arabiya News interview with the family by Kamal Kobeissi, "Family of murdered Iraqi-American woman recounts story of brutal attack," in which -- as the article title states -- the family describes the attack, in the words of the murdered woman's cousin Hussein Alwadi:

He said the murderer snuck into the house on Wednesday morning from the back garden.

"The garden has no fence so he was able to break the glass of the kitchen window right away and apparently he did so without making a noise."

Hussein added that the attacker then reached for the window handle, opened it, and got inside.

"He did so after watching Shaima's husband drive away with four of the children he was taking to school. Only Shaima and her eldest daughter Fatima stayed in the house. Fatima was asleep."

The murderer, Hussein recounted, saw Shaima in the dinning room and attacked her with an iron rod or a spanner.

"He first hit her on her forehead then on her right ear. The third strike was on the back of her head. This was followed by five fast and consecutive strikes on her head and shoulders."

Shaima, Hussein said, lost consciousness, upon which the attacker left the house.

Many non-Muslims (and possibly some Muslims), understandably enough, have asked how the family could know so much about the murder if no one witnessed these details. Being a naturally skeptical individual, I also wondered, but as a careful skeptic, I turned my jaundiced eye on my own skepticism and asked myself how the family might be in a position to know.

The woman was attacked on March 21, 2012 (Wednesday) and was taken off life support on March 24, 2012 (Saturday). On March 27, 2012 (Tuesday), the interview took place. I see from another report, "Iraqi Woman Fatally Beaten in El Cajon Home" (San Diego 6 News), that by March 31, 2012 (Saturday), at latest, "Police . . . sealed the coroner[']s report about the death" of Shaima Alwadi, but I haven't yet found what date the coroner conducted the postmortem autopsy. If the autopsy too place on the 24th, 25th, or 26th, then the family might have learned the details of the attack and been able to recount the scenario in that interview of March 27.

I would expect, normally, that the coroner's report in such cases would be immediately sealed, with only those officials investigating the crime informed, but I don't actually know the official proceedure, and even if the official process entails keeping the family uninformed, one can't discount the possibility that the official steps were not followed.

For what it's worth, my impression is that the cousin's description of the attack does sound more like a coroner's report than the report of an eyewitness -- too precise, detailed, and specific -- for what eyewitness would be counting the exact number of blows rapidly struck to the head and shoulders? Do witnesses keep count of such things? I don't know.

I therefore suggest that we all wait, and hesitate to pronounce judgment before all the facts are in.

Honor Killing and Islam?

Reliance of the Traveller

Ahmad Ibn Lulu Ibn Al-Naqib (1302-67)

Noah Ha Mim Keller (Translator)

(Image from Amazon)

One of my students in a research writing course that I'm teaching wants to write on honor killings, and in her proposal presentation, she made the assertion that such killings are justified by Islam. I cautioned her to be very careful in stating this claim and to make sure that she has evidence to back it up, for the general view is that support for honor killings in Muslim circles stems more from culture than religion.

Figuring that she might have difficulty locating relevant sources, I looked into this issue myself and found the book depicted above, from the Shafi'i school of sharia in Sunni Islam, which states a legal point that might be relevant:

o1.2 The following are not subject to retaliation:
. . .
(4) a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring (Al-Naqib, Reliance of the Traveller, Beltsville, Maryland: Amana Publications, 1994, pages 583-584)

No restrictions are mentioned, so this would at least appear to allow for honor killing by parents or grandparents. Note that this text, including its English translation, has been approved by the prestigious Al-Azhar University's Islamic Research Academy, which has provided its stamp of approval (pages xx-xxi).

Honor killings, however, are not mentioned in this legal context cited above, so I don't know for certain that the legal point here is even broached in arguments based on sharia with respect to honor killings. Moreover, such killings are often carried out by other relatives -- a brother, an uncle, a cousin -- so I would expect to find the issue of honor killings dealt with elsewhere in Islamic law. I suspect that my student will have a bit of digging to undertake in excavating laws with any explicit bearing on honor killing. There's also the issue of differing schools of Islamic law, which would need to be investigated.

I wonder if a look into defenses of honor killings in Muslim countries would offer much of substance.

Assistance welcome . . .