A murder and a call for solidarity and prayer

Shaima Alawadi, the mother of five children, ages 8 to 17, was murdered in an unspeakably brutal beating in her home in San Diego. Mrs. Alawadi and her family came from Iraq in the mid-1990s and are Muslims. A vicious anti-Muslim note was found at the crime scene. The family had received at least one threatening note prior to the murder. Police are still investigating the question of whether the murder was a hate crime, but the evidence certainly points in that direction.

Recently many of us who are Catholics have been standing up and speaking out for religious freedom. We have been joined by people of other faiths, including Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Latter Day Saints, Jews, and Muslims. Among Muslims, important voices such as those of Shaykh Hamza Yusuf of Zaytuna College and brilliant young Becket Fund lawyer Asma Uddin have been raised in solidarity with the Catholic Church and her right not to be coerced in relation to the HHS abortion drug, sterilization, and contraception mandates. Surely there is no right of religious freedom more fundamental than the right to practice one's faith and publicly identify oneself as a member of the faith without fear of violent attack. This, it appears, is precisely the right that Mrs. Alawadi was denied by her murderer who hated her because she was a Muslim.

Her family and many other Muslim Americans now live in fear of future attacks. This is a time for those of us who are Catholic, and, indeed, for all Christians, to stand in solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters and speak up for their religious freedom and other human rights. Let us also pray for Mrs. Alawadi, who as a devout Muslim lived, as Christians live, in the hope of resurrection, and for her family---especially for those five children whose beloved mother has been violently taken from them.