An uncharacteristic apathy washed over me when I heard the news of an American Muslim woman murdered in El Cajon, California last month. Thirty two year old Shaima AlAwadi was found bludgeoned to death in her home as a note calling her a terrorist lay next to her. Recently discovered court documents indicating that AlAwadi was filing for divorce are now leading the media to suggest that her assailant may have been a family member thus rendering her another casualty in a phenomenon that is on the rise in North America called “honor killings” that supposedly emanates from the higher numbers of immigrant Muslim communities into the continent.

I’m not an apathetic person. To the contrary, I often find myself in the embarrassing situation of explaining why I’ve suddenly become passionate, angry, or upset about issues that affect “other” communities besides my own. Shaima AlAwadi was an immigrant from a Muslim nation, and my parents immigrated from a Muslim Republic. I’m a wife and mother living in America in my thirties, and Alawadi was also a thirty something mother and wife living in America. AlAwadi was a woman who because of her head scarf was visibly Muslim, and I, too, am visibly Muslim in the same way.

Despite our many intersections, however, I find myself in new territory, engaged in an awkward, guilt ridden internal struggle that of which the major undercurrent suggests that I’m not angry or upset enough about this event. Fundamentally, my guilt lies in rejecting an  idea that most people seem to take for granted: I should be very, very upset because AlAwadi was a Muslim woman and somehow this death should matter more to me because of that. It does not. In fact, the continuous focus on her Muslim status detracts from the broader, more universal context of her murder. It also seems to confuse people when they try to extract actionable meaning from the tragedy.

In an age where news stories are broken in seconds not minutes, it’s easy to fall into the trap of having the wrong conversations about important events. Opinions and scholarship are no longer methodically laid out for careful consideration but are quickly packaged and produced for immediate consumption by an audience that’s time constrained and seems more concerned with quantity of information rather than quality. The rhetoric surrounding Al Awadi’s murder is no exception.

At the peril of being misinterpreted as being opposed to hate crime legislation, I will express that I find the hate crime paradigm of understanding AlAwadi’s murder both divisive and distracting. Hate crime legislation exists to protect those that would be victimized by violence that is rooted in a political or social cause. The problem with this terminology seeping into public discourse is that it automatically pits communities unfamiliar with the nuance of defining hate crimes against one another. Conversation then ultimately moves away from the central issue, that of one individual being murdered by another individual mercilessly, and then becomes a conversation about whether bias is real, whether the minority in question is being oversensitive or not and most unfortunately whether or not the victim’s inability to be perceived as a member of the broader society at large is not at the heart of their demise.

Calling AlAwadi’s murder a potential “honor killing” proves even more distracting. I spoke with Dr. Nancy Stockdale, a Middle Eastern Studies profesor at University of North Texas and author of Colonial Encounters Among English and Palestinian Women, 1800-1948 (2007), about this terminology and its impact on discussions about Shaima AlAwadi. Dr. Stockdale brought up the idea that honor is not an ideology that is exclusive to the Muslim world. “If someone cheats on their spouse here, don’t they feel disrespected in front of their community?” The professor also mentioned a point I had not considered previously, that nearly one third of women murdered in the United States die at the hands of someone with whom they’re intimate. Is it a huge leap to assume that many of those murders could have been committed by partners who felt betrayed, undermined, disrespected and, yes, even dishonored?

Just a few days ago, Kevin Allen fatally shot his wife, Katherina, and his daughter in an Ohio Cracker Barrel restaurant after his wife told him she was leaving him. Is it ridiculous to guess that Kevin Allen may have been motivated by a sense of honor or shame? What is the criteria that holds him exempt from having participated in an honor killing? Katherina Allen was shot and killed because her husband was mentally unstable, but Shaima AlAwadi may have been murdered by her husband because she’s foreign and a Muslim? What religion was Katherina Allen? Was she born in this country or not? Why is it important to know those details about the late Mrs. AlAwadi but not about the late Mrs. Allen?

As an American Muslim, this untenable distinction between the two women cuts deeply in my psyche and lays at the core of my shutting down when it comes to discussions about AlAwadi’s death. I cannot discuss her on the terms that both the general population and the media want to discuss her. The nomenclature used crowds out the sense of connection I have with women who are non-Muslims. It makes me feel othered and misunderstood. I imagine for many non-Muslim American women in the United States, it also causes them to view this crime as something that happens to “those people” from “over there” and thus offers a safe, yet intellectually questionable degree of distance from this type of violence.

The overemphasis on ethnic and religious identifiers obfuscates more important and central issues. While it would be remiss of anyone considering the merits of the case to dismiss entirely that she was an immigrant, a Muslim, or leaving her husband, I believe we can do better in terms of how we as women and a community of informed citizenry frame the discussion. As I researched this story, almost all of the headlines included terms such as “hijab”, “honor killing”, and “hate crime”, and I can’t help but feeling that these buzz words detracted from conversations we should be having about violence in general as it applies to women or anyone, for that matter.

I’m struggling with how to frame this death and the discussions about it so that each of us are moved by it in a way that we consider how to pull a more productive and meaningful course of action from it other than making it yet another line of distinction between us. A woman in El Cajo, California was beaten to death in her home. First, investigators thought it may have been someone who didn’t like the way she dressed or looked, but now they think it might have been her husband.

Does the absence of AlAwadi’s faith and ethnicity change how you would frame this discussion?

What would be your headline?

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Realization: I am, without a doubt, just a plain old human being.  I know.  Devastating, really.

Tonight, I’m thinking of “the drift.”

The drift occurs when the emotional space between two people expands at a seemingly infinitesimal, yet constant rate. It is what begins as forgetting to return a phone call and ends in a faint memory of someone you knew quite well a very long time ago. The drift is painful, hopeless and, 99% of the time, permanent. There is no “un-drifting” once you’ve drifted.

When you walked in, I felt a peaceful knowing in my heart that we were going to have great adventures together. You looked shy. I knew you had no idea how beautiful you were. I was going to show you that.

I mean, for me, my life is full. I have to make room for everything, anything.  If I want to breathe, I have to look at my to do list. I have a space between 11:45 and 11:50… I can breathe in those five minutes or I can make an awkward phone call. I barely have time for the people with whom I have relationships that are not awkward and forced, so who needs that?

As I convinced you that you were just as beautiful on the outside as you were on the inside, you taught me to believe that I was brave, wise and strong. With you by my side, I no longer had to pretend to be that. I was that… because you saw that when you saw me. Your eyes made me real.

People will say things.

“Make time to fix this thing.”

“Friendship is important.”

“Hold on.”

“Don’t let go.”

And other lyrics from “.38 Special.”

Others understand. This is who I am.  My life is this way because I want it to be this way. I seriously don’t have time for this kind of thing.

Even when there were oceans between us, we were inseparable. Two thumps in one heartbeat… blood rushing in, blood rushing out. Absent from the day to day of each others’ lives, one phone call would cascade in a blanket of reassurance. You are loved, blood in, you are perfect, blood out.

We’re all grown ups here and while I realize that some people prefer their reality sugar coated, I’m more of the “hold the sugar, give it to me straight up” kind of woman. My heart is too full and my life is just too busy to harbor a silly, childish hope that we can just pick up right where we left off. There is now only time for picking up socks and groceries and kids from practices.

You loved, accepted and admired me without any reservation or envy and, most importantly, without any expectation. You are the only person I have never feared I’d disappoint. If I am honest with myself, no one had ever loved me like that, nobody has loved me like that since, and I suspect that nobody ever will.

When the drift happens, it happens because it’s what both of the people want. People will fight to protect something they need. People let things that are no longer relevant to them fade away. Either way, it’s important to note that everyone in the situation is making a choice.

Conscientiousness optional.

I looked up one day and you were simply not there anymore. I was hurt, alone and, yes, a little angry. Babies have been born, rings exchanged, people buried. Suddenly, I realized that I couldn’t even remember the last time I looked in your direction. I also realize that nobody seems to ask whose fault it is when a book ends. This isn’t much different.

The drift itself, while painful, is not the excruciating thing. The real pain shows up when it hits you that there will probably be more drifts and that everyone is a potential drift candidate.

You will never be replaced. I cannot move on. There is no “letting go” of you. There is only an ache in my heart, a lump in my throat, and the horrible realization that there is nothing I can do. I don’t know you anymore and you don’t know me and we are past the point of pretending with any degree of credibility that this is not the reality of who we are to each other. I cannot pretend this is not happening anymore.

The drift is the best reason to hold the people still in your life a little tighter today. Because those moments after a drift, you’ll find the certainty that all this won’t last forever firmly, if not tragically, renewed. Sometimes, you’ve got to just take a deep breath somewhere between 11:45 and 11:50 and pay attention to right now. This minute. Here.

Goodbye.

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