Ruth Pearl, the mother of Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was brutally murdered by Muslim extremists in Pakistan in 2002, thrusting her and her husband, Judea, into the global spotlight, died on July 20 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 85. Judea Pearl confirmed her death but did not specify the cause. Mrs. Pearl, who was born in Iraq, was a retired software developer living in Los Angeles when Daniel, 38, The Journal’s South Asia bureau chief, was kidnapped while reporting in Karachi. Despite pleas from his parents and desperate efforts to win his release by the U.S. government, his kidnappers beheaded him on Feb. 1, 2002, recording a video of his last words — “My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Jewish, I’m Jewish.” Daniel’s murder came just months after the terrorists attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and its allies. His murderers singled him out because he was American and Jewish, a fact that many observers said underlined the particularly virulent threat posed by Islamic radicals.
