A truly horrifying story from California: California Muslim Mother Beaten to Death, Left With Note Saying ‘Go Back to Your Country’.

I’m sure some will disagree with me, but I have no doubt that the climate of deranged xenophobia and anti-Muslim hatred built and fed by people like Newt Gingrich, Pamela Geller, and Robert Spencer played a large part in this brutal crime.

Fatima al-Himidi (in brown headscarf), 17, embraces an unknown person
In the wake of the senseless killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida, another possible hate crime in California underscored the chasm between American values of equality and non-discrimination and incidents of intolerance.

A 32-year-old Iraqi victim of a brutal beating in her San Diego, California, home died yesterday when, with doctors’ expectations that she would not survive, her family removed her from life support. Shaima Alawadi’s family thinks the beating constitutes a hate crime, and police acknowledge the possibility.

Alawadi, a mother of five children aged 8 to 17, immigrated to the U.S. from Iraq in 1993. On Wednesday, her eldest daughter, Fatima al-Himidi, found Alwadi “drowning in her own blood.” Al-Himidi said her mother was beaten with a tire iron. The daughter told San Diego’s KUSI television news that a note near her mother read, “Go back to your country, you terrorist.” (Another report said the note read, “Go back to your own country. You’re a terrorist.”)

“We’re not the terrorists,” al-Himidi said, speaking to the news camera, her voice shaky with emotion. “You are, whoever did it.”