Ahmed Al-Jumaili fled Iraq to escape Isis, only to be gunned down in Dallas, Texas.

Before he emigrated he told his friend 'I don’t want to die alone in Iraq, I want to live with my wife in America, I don’t want to die here'

Ahmed Al-Jumaili was an Iraqi man who wanted to change his life to the better. For most of his life he lived in Baghdad, but moved to Texas last month.

On Thursday night, he was shot and killed on the front lawn of his new home. He was 36. Him and his brother had run outside their apartment late at night to look at the snow, while his wife Zahraa took photos.

Ahmed was so excited as he'd never seen snow before. But instead of playing in it with his wife and throwing snowballs, he fell, and saw his blood on the cold ice. "I am hit", he shouted. His mind couldn’t comprehend why he was attacked. Why he was killed in this place which he thought was safe? Ahmed survived three wars and numerous bombs in Iraq, only to be killed by the road on Walnut Bend, Dallas.

I never met Ahmed personally, but we have a mutual friend from Baghdad – Iyad Abbas – who was very close to him. Iyad has been telling me all about Ahmed, and just how shocked everyone is at his death. They can't believe what's happened. Although it's not just his close friends who feel like this. Ahmed's murder has shocked many Muslims living in the West. Everyone is asking: Why? Why he was killed in such cold blooded way, similar to an assassination or an execution?

According to Iyad, Ahmed never complained about anything; he loved life. He wanted to live happily and contribute to the society he lived in. His dreams were simple, he wanted to marry, raise a family, and work. He never asked for more. His friends knew him as the “ever smiling Ahmed”, or “Ahmed with the smiley face”. He never argued with others, he never hated anyone in this world. He never had an enemy.

He met the woman of his dreams in 2013. They got married. He wrote on his Facebook page that it was the happiest day of his life. He thought it was too good to be true. And he was right. Two months after their wedding, she had to leave him to travel to America with her family. Her father was granted humanitarian refugee status and they were welcomed as refugees. Ahmed and Zahraa made a very difficult decision to separate from each other temporarily, before reuniting in Dallas.

Once Zahraa had immigrated, Ahmed started the long and tedious process of applying to the Immigration authorities in the USA to re-unite with his wife. The married couple waited 460 days to reunite.

Ahmed’s happiness when his application was finally granted was indescribable. According to Iyad, he always talked about America. For him, living there was his dream. He repeatedly said "I don’t want to die alone in Iraq, I want to live with my wife in America, I don’t want to die here".

Ahmed left Baghdad on February 4, landed in transit in Amman, Jordan on February 5, and ended his journey in George Bush International Airport in Houston on February 6.

On February 19, he posted an update online while at home. "Finally I am with my beautiful wife, GOD bless her," it read. Two weeks later, he was killed just metres from where he posted this.

Was it a hate crime? At this point, it's impossible to say without speculating. But does that really matter? As a Muslim living in the West, I cannot describe just how much these incidents frighten me. Am I going to end up like Ahmed? Escaping the terrors of Isis in Iraq to be killed in the West?

I used to leave my doors unlocked, now I have to double check that they're secure, and the windows are shut before I go to sleep. I never go out late at night. My children say, "Dad, it's ok, we're not in Iraq". How can I explain to them that it doesn't matter? That death can follow you wherever you go. There is no safe haven.

Ahmed’s family and friends published a video on Facebook today: a video from his funeral. His body was buried in an Islamic cemetery in Texas. Watching it, you start to think that he may have been right. America is Ahmed's home, and now its soil will always wrap his body.

May his soul rest in peace.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/ahmed-aljumaili-fled-iraq-to-escape-isis-only-to-be-gunned-down-in-dallas-texas-as-a-Muslim-his-murder-terrifies-me-10097387.html



I wonder what this will be put down to? A Snowball fight?

Not at all surprising. These groups are more like the Mafia, than political movements. So is Russia, incidentally.

Quill, that is the stupidest answer I have ever known you give.

This is a terrible crime, though what really is poor is comments like this which try to paint a different picture?

Was it a hate crime? At this point, it's impossible to say without speculating. But does that really matter? As a Muslim living in the West, I cannot describe just how much these incidents frighten me. Am I going to end up like Ahmed? Escaping the terrors of Isis in Iraq to be killed in the West?


Sorry but where is the mass increase of physical hate crimes against Muslims?
Granted there are some idiots out there with verbal hate crime, but to promote a view of Muslims being in fear of their life in the west is distorting the truth, where they are in fact way more safer than in any Muslim majority country.Sorry but promoting a distorting view of fear when none really exists is poor to say the least.

Hate crimes is a problem and if you want to know the numbers here they are

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2013/november/annual-hate-crime-statistics-show-slight-decease/annual-hate-crime-statistics-show-slight-decrease

risingsun wrote:Quill, that is the stupidest answer I have ever known you give.  

But fortunately for you, this thread is not about me. Carry on...

No, it's about a man who has been killed and they are still investigating why, who was killed out of the blue in a place that he thought safe, that he had jumped through hoops to get to. And to say what you said was totally crass.

risingsun wrote:No, it's about a man who has been killed and they are still investigating why, who was killed out of the blue in a place that he thought safe, that he had jumped through hoops to get to.  And to say what you said was totally crass.

What is disgusting is people claiming that Muslims are in fear of their lives in the west when hate murder crimes are actually rare in the US.
Yes lets hope they catch the killers but the picture being presented here is disgusting, based around an invented view that Muslims are living in fear in the West of their lives based off this murder.

Texas Muslims fear for safety after Iraqi man shot dead in Dallas attack

Muslim leaders in Texas have expressed their fears over rising anxiety in the community following the murder of an Iraqi migrant who was shot dead in Dallas as he stood outside his apartment to photograph his first snowfall.

Ahmed al-Jumaili had waited a year for paperwork to be completed so he could join his wife, Zahraa, in the US, where they hoped they could start a new life together in a safer country. She greeted him at the airport with balloons, flowers and a sign that said she had “waited 460 days … for this moment”.

Less than three weeks later, Jumaili was dead: killed in an apparently random shooting by unknown assailants who are still at large. Police said that Jumaili, his wife and her brother were outside their apartment complex in a north Dallas suburb late last Wednesday, taking photographs of snow in the parking lot. Four suspects entered the complex on foot, multiple shots were fired, and the 36-year-old was killed after being hit in the chest.

While no motive has been established, there were immediate suspicions that it was a hate crime – a fear that is emblematic of the increased anxiety felt by many Muslims in the wake of high-profile Isis executions of westerners, the deaths of three students in North Carolina last month and some inflammatory statements and protests in Texas.

A press conference was held in Dallas on Monday afternoon where activists said they would offer a $7,000 reward for information leading to the capture of Jumaili’s killer or killers. A memorial fund for the family has raised in excess of $25,000.

Concern among the Muslim community in Houston was heightened last month when part of an Islamic centre in Houston burned down. A homeless man was arrested and charged with arson. He claimed it was accidental, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Shpendim Nadzaku, the imam for the Islamic Association of North Texas, told the Guardian that since taking up the role last June, he had seen that “unfortunately, some of this racial and bigoted talk and behaviour has been quite common”.

“There has definitely been an increase of very open vitriolic language towards Muslims in general,” he said.

Nadzaku said he had met with the family and that Jumaili was “gunned down before their eyes without any type or reason or explanation”. His funeral took place last Saturday.

In January, about a week after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, large numbers of protesters gathered outside a Muslim conference in Garland that took place only seven miles away from the site of the murder.

“We’re here to stand up for the American way of life [against] a faction of people that are trying to destroy us,” one man told NBC’s local news outlet. The title of the conference was “Stand with the Prophet against terror and hate”.



Nadzaku said he saw one sign that read “Go home and take Obama with you”. He believes that some rightwing politicians have stoked a threatening atmosphere by seeking to make connections between violent terrorist acts overseas and a perceived potential threat to American domestic security.

“I think politics has a lot to do with it. When our politicians are going to import the unfortunate situations out there as if it’s something we have in our own backyard and use it to polarise us … I think it’s a very dangerous path they’re taking,” he said.

An anti-Muslim activist said in February that she planned to hold a “draw the prophet” contest in the same convention centre in Garland.

Texas Muslim Capitol Day in Austin in January was disrupted by protests, while Molly White, a Republican state representative from central Texas, posted a message on her Facebook page saying she “did leave an Israeli flag on the reception desk in my office with instructions to staff to ask representatives from the Muslim community to renounce Islamic terrorist groups and publicly announce allegiance to America and our laws. We will see how long they stay in my office.”

In 2007, Dan Patrick, then a Texas Republican senator and now lieutenant governor – the second-most powerful elected position in the state – boycotted a prayer delivered by a Muslim cleric in the Texas capitol.

Ted Cruz, a US senator from Texas and possible presidential candidate, said in 2012 that Sharia law is “an enormous problem”.

Alia Salem, the executive director of the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that there were an estimated 200,000 Muslims in the region and that she had noticed a rise in activity by white supremacists and other racist groups since the election of Barack Obama as president.

“The sentiment that I know I personally have and that others have expressed to me is that even though we don’t have anything concrete on whether it’s a hate crime or not, it’s another Muslim who has been killed in a very violent way and it just continues to heighten the sense of insecurity that we feel,” she said.

“I can’t tell you how many people come up to me and they’re frightened to leave their house. Women who wear their headscarves don’t want to go to work or school or even go to the grocery store, for that matter.

“I personally have received death threats and have had to report them to law enforcement. It just continues to build. Even though we’re trying to be strong and say, ‘oh, these are just crazy, they’re not going to do anything’, every time a Muslim dies the first fear that’s popping into everybody’s head is, ‘they’re after us’.”

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/09/dallas-iraqi-man-shot-dead-texas

Funnily enough, it has all been building since American Sniper, but that's what you wanted wasn't it Clint?

See what I mean a complete distortion of the truth in the US whipped up by left wing idiots.
There is no mass hate against Muslims to the point we are seeing them being killed in any numders, yet we see based off a two incidents one of which has no evidence to a hate crime we see unsubstanciated claims being made here.
Blimey, hate crimes happen more to whites than any group, then blacks next, with a the highest religious group by far being the Jews targeted with hate crimes than any other religious group.
Such articles like this are utterly disgusting creating unfounded fear, when there should be unity.