Memorial held for murdered Iraq-American woman

Kassim Alhimidi holds the body of his wife, Shaima Alawadi Religious dignitaries joined dozens of mourners at a Lakeside mosque to offer condolences to the family of an Iraqi woman fatally beaten last week in a possible hate crime at her El Cajon home. Mourners gathered to pay respects on Tuesday for an Iraqi-American woman who died after being severely beaten in her California home by a killer who left a threatening note that has prompted an investigation of the case as a possible hate crime.
Shaima Alawadi, a 32-year-old stay-at-home mother of five, was found unconscious in the dining room of her rented home in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon on Wednesday morning by her 17-year-old daughter, police said.
She was taken to a local trauma center with a severe head injury, police said. Doctors took her off life support and she died on Saturday afternoon.
"We want to let everyone know how innocent our mother, this woman, was," Alawadi's husband Kassim al-Himidi told a somber crowd at the Islamic Center of Lakeside near El Cajon in San Diego County, speaking in Arabic as his son Mohammed translated.
Addressing his wife's unknown killer, he said: "The main question we would like to ask is, 'What are you getting out of this, and why would you do this?'" Himidi did not speak with anyone after his remarks at the mosque, located about 25 miles (40 km) from downtown San Diego.
"As an Iraqi and an American citizen here, all of us are in the same boat. We stand to save this boat. We stand not to kill each other, but to get to know each other," San Diego Imam Sharif Battikhi told the mourners. "These criminal hands, they don't just kill (Alawadi). But they kill our community."
Alawadi's family was planning to fly her body back to Iraq within the week for burial, according to Sadaf Hane, civil rights director of the San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Representatives of the Iraqi government attended the service.
Hate crime
Police have said they were investigating the killing of Alawadi as a possible hate crime because of a note found near her after the beating that police said was "threatening in nature." Authorities have stopped short of ruling out other scenarios.
A friend of the family, Sura Alzaidy, told the San Diego Union Tribune newspaper that the note found near Alawadi read: "Go back to your own country. You're a terrorist."
If hate is confirmed as a motive in the killing, it would be the worst bias crime committed against Arabs or Muslims in years in the area, Hane said.
El Cajon and nearby areas are home to some 50,000 to 60,000 immigrants and refugees of Middle Eastern descent, police said, but it has not experienced violent hate crimes in the past.
"We don't know if it was a hate crime," Salam al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles, said at the service.
"We are here to grieve with the family of Shaima. We are here for her today. We are here to show our love and respect for her family. We don't know what the facts of the case are," he said.
The FBI is assisting the El Cajon Police Department in the investigation, and has provided agents from a squad that is specifically trained to conduct hate crime investigations, according to FBI spokesman Darrell Foxworth.
Facebook campaign
Silent candlelight vigils were planned in the area by members of a Facebook group 'One Million Hijabs for Shaima Alawadi,' which has garnered nearly 6,500 members.
Alawadi wore a traditional Muslim hijab, or headscarf, and had lived in the El Cajon home only a few weeks, having just recently moved back to San Diego County from Michigan, according to a family friend.
Her spouse had worked in San Diego as a contractor for the U.S. Army, serving as a cultural adviser to train soldiers who were being deployed to the Middle East.
Redman said the husband was on disability, and Alawadi did not work. She also is survived by her three daughters and two sons.
A Facebook campaign started on behalf of Alawadi urges women all over the world to wear a hijab at least one day in April.