[WCUSP] SFGate: Religious hate seen as motive in killing/Fremont slaying: Muslim leaders and relatives of Afghan American mother shot at point-blank range say only motive they can imagine for anyone wanting her...

[Katharina Harlow]

 People are frightened. This extreme anti-Islamic hate crime against a
mother has shaken our local community.
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Saturday, October 21, 2006 (SF Chronicle)
Religious hate seen as motive in killing/Fremont slaying: Muslim leaders and relatives of Afghan American mother shot at point-blank range say only motive they can imagine for anyone wanting her...
Matthai Chakko Kuruvila, Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writers


   Local Muslim leaders on Friday denounced as a likely hate crime the brazen
daylight shooting death in Fremont of a mother of six, and police said
that they had arrested a parolee described as a "person of interest" in
connection with the slaying.
   Killed Thursday by a single bullet to the head as she walked with her
3-year-old daughter on a well-to-do residential street, she was
distinguished by a hijab, the head scarf worn by some devout Muslim women.
The Afghan immigrant had no purse or money on her, family members said.
   Stunned relatives and Muslim leaders said the only motive they could see,
outside of insanity, would be hatred.
   "Whoever did this did not see Alia Ansari, a mother of six children," said
Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, one of the nation's most respected Muslim scholars and
leaders, who spoke to the media outside of the Ansaris' modest two-bedroom
apartment. "He saw a symbol of something that people are taught to hate."
   "All that we can assume is that it's a hate crime," said Hassan Ansari,
23, the youngest of Alia Ansari's seven siblings.
   Fremont police said Friday that they don't know why Ansari was killed. At
about 2:40 p.m. Thursday, she was walking near Central Avenue and Glenmoor
Drive with her 3-year-old daughter to pick up two other children from
elementary school when a man opened fire before fleeing in a car.
   "We still have no definite indication as to motive," said police Sgt. Jeff
Swadener, a department spokesman. "Was it racial? Was it a hate crime? Was
it a street robbery or a random act of violence? I don't know."
   Police said a 27-year-old Fremont man was being held on an unrelated
parole violation but remained a person of interest in the homicide. His
name wasn't released.
   Police detained the man about an hour after the shooting and about a mile
away. Officers pulled the man over near Mowry Avenue and Blacow Road
because he and his black Toyota Tercel matched the description provided by
witnesses, police said.
   "We're still up in the air as far as the actual involvement or linking to
the homicide," Swadener said.
   The Alameda County coroner had planned to do an autopsy Friday, but
Ansari's relatives said they want to keep her body intact because of their
religious beliefs. A coroner's spokesman declined to discuss the delay but
said a decision on how to proceed could be made Monday.
   Islam prohibits the desecration of any dead body, said Yusuf, co-founder
of the Zaytuna Institute in Hayward, believed to be the first Islamic
seminary in the nation. In addition, only female relatives are allowed to
wash and view a naked female body.
   Yusuf said that an autopsy of just Alia Ansari's head, rather than her
full body, would be acceptable.
   Hassan Ansari, Alia's brother, said family members were planning to take
legal action to stop the autopsy, but said they were leaving the decision
in the hands of her husband, Ahmadullah Ansari.
   Throughout the day, a weeping procession of dozens of relatives and Afghan
community members filed into the Ansaris' apartment in the Glenmoor
neighborhood of Fremont. It is a short walk from a cluster of Afghan
businesses often called Little Kabul, the economic heart of the largest
Afghan community in the nation.
   Friends and relatives said they could see no reason, other than the head
scarf, why a stranger would want to kill Alia Ansari, who was often
described as "kind" and "innocent."
   Most classical interpretations of Islam require women to wear a head
scarf, although only a fraction of American Muslim women wear one, several
female Muslim leaders said.
   "What happened here is an act of terrorism," said Rona Popal, executive
director of the Afghan Coalition, which provides services to the
community. "There is no reason to shoot an innocent woman walking down the
street, holding her child."
   Local Muslim leaders and the victim's relatives attributed blame to an
American culture of violence, propagated through movies and video games
that reward players for killing. In addition, they said things such as
talk radio, politicians and religious zealotry by some Christians had
focused on Muslims since the Sept. 11 attacks.
   "Justice will not be served by merely catching the killer," said Hassan
Ansari. "We have to figure out how to stop these kinds of things from
happening. ... American society is what feeds people's ignorance."
   "Mostly it's the fault of the media, because they show Muslims in such a
way that people hate them," said Feraidoon Mojadedi, owner of the Rumi
Bookstore in Little Kabul. "People are dying all over the world, but what
did she have to do with it? She's a housewife, a mother of children."
   Three women at the Islamic Society of the East Bay said they would
continue to wear head scarves even if the killing was a hate crime. "Even
if they wiped out everyone on Earth, I would not remove the hijab," said
Suzanne Azim, 43, a Hayward resident.
   Alia Ansari, 37, had lived in the United States since 1986 and had become
a U.S. citizen, family members said. Like many Afghan Americans, Ansari
was a refugee from the war against the Soviet Union. She came from Mazar-e
Sharif, where her sole sister still lives.
   She typically drove to pick up two of her daughters from Glenmoor
Elementary School, but left home on foot Thursday because of engine
trouble. Witnesses said a man got out of a car, approached her and shot
her at point-blank range before returning to the car and speeding away.
   The young daughter who was with Ansari was unharmed, Swadener said.
   When Ansari was shot, her daughter began crying and later told her family
over and over, "A man killed my mother," said Hassan Ansari.
   Maria Garcia, who lives across the street from where the shooting
occurred, said, "I didn't see what happened but I heard the gunfire, and I
heard the crying of the child."
   The slaying marks the second time someone in the victim's family has been
shot and killed in Fremont. In January 2002, Afghan community leader Rahim
Ansari, 34, of Union City was shot and killed inside his business, Pamir
Travel, in Little Kabul.
   The suspected gunman in that incident, upset over a spurned romance, also
wounded Rahim Ansari's brother-in-law, Zabiullah Ansari, a second-cousin
of Alia Ansari. In an interview Friday, Zabiullah Ansari, 48, expressed
hope that the right person had been arrested. But he said, "They don't
know what happened.
   "You're killed in front of your kid -- how can people do that? They're not
human beings. This lady was totally innocent. Why did someone shoot her? "

   E-mail the writers at mkuruvila at sfchronicle.com and hlee at sfchronicle.com. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2006 SF Chronicle