As she lay on her living room floor, bleeding to death, Shaima Al Awadi must
have asked herself at least once — would I have been spared if I was not a
hijabi?
In the days leading to the attack, she had been warned once by her attacker,
a note she dismissed as a child's prank.
As investigators gathered clues to decide whether the attack on the
32-year-old Iraqi-American was a hate crime, women across the UAE — hijabis and
non-hijabis alike — said they wished Shaima had paid heed to the warning.
"Whoever committed the crime saw Shaima's hijab and assumed that her religion
makes her a terrorist. The killer did not see her as a person and seems to
believe that Islam equals terrorism, a falsehood that is a product of fear and
ignorance on the part of people who propagate it," Helen Williams, 35, a Dubai
resident said.
Williams, who has two daughters living in Canada, said she was shocked that
an innocent woman had to pay the price for being a Muslim.
What happened to Shaima is not the first or lone incident. Two years ago, two
Muslim women in Seattle were subjected to a similar attack, when they stopped to
fill petrol.
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