COLUMN: On intolerance: Shaima Al Awadi, Trayvon Martin, Central Michigan University
Shaima Al Awadi, mother of five children, immigrated from Iraq to the U.S. in 1993. On Friday, she was beaten to death with a tire iron inside her San Diego home.
Her eldest daughter found her “drowning in her own blood” with a note reading “Go back to your country, you terrorist.” Al Awadi was 32 years old.
This vile incident comes nearly a month after the no less abhorrent shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American boy in Sanford, FL.
Flashback to St. Patrick’s Day 2012 in Mount Pleasant. CMU students and visiting friends reported being harassed by bigoted epithets ranging from “faggot” to “jew” to “slut.”
Flyers for last weekend’s production of “The Vagina Monologues” have been reported ripped off the boards in Anspach Hall.
What are we doing?
This behavior has absolutely no place in America or at Central Michigan University.
We may never be able to altogether snuff out intolerance and violence on a national scale. But within this university, all students have a right to feel safe. We all have a right to express ourselves and our views.
No one should be made to worry about being harassed when they walk down the street. When one group’s flyers are torn down, when one group is silenced, we are all silenced.
Liberal or conservative; gay or straight; Christian, Jewish, Muslim or atheist; male, female or transgendered; rich or poor, we are all here at CMU to get an education and deserve to do so without being threatened.
Each of us is entitled to our own opinions. Whatever they are, those opinions should never be used to harm another person.
Students who would demean other students in such a way should reconsider why they came here in the first place.
It doesn’t take much to be a tolerant person. It doesn’t even take an open mind or abundance of respect; although those things don’t hurt. It requires only that you afford others the same right to exist that they afford you.
It's an important part of being an American citizen.
The man who murdered Shaima Al Awadi is an example of one extreme of ethical failure. The same is true of George Zimmerman, who shot Trayvon Martin.
These men are the end result of the very same attitude and disregard for humanity that would lead one student to call another a “faggot” while walking down the street in the sun on a warm St. Patrick’s Day afternoon.
Al Awadi’s daughter, who found her nearly lifeless in a pool of her own blood, said to San Diego’s KUSI news, “We’re not the terrorists. You are, whoever did it.”
This is America. This is CMU. We are better than this.
We have to be.
