Posted by Richard on September 11, 2019
Eighteen years ago this morning, in the words of Rep. Ilhan Omar, “some people did something.”
On September 11, 2001, barbarians with box cutters — primitive 7th-century savages who could never build a World Trade Center or a 747, but whose insane ideology is dedicated to making the building of such things impossible — murdered 2,996 innocent people and changed Lower Manhattan from this:
to this:
Never forget.
Never forget.
Never, ever forget.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: 9/11, al qaeda, barbarism, flight 93, heroism, islamofascism, new york, terrorism, twin towers, war, world trade center, wtc | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on September 11, 2018
Seventeen years have passed since that awful September 11th morning. Virtually all of today’s college students, and even recent grads, didn’t see what happened to the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and to the Pentagon. They didn’t watch, in shock and disbelief, as the second plane crashed into the South Tower. They didn’t feel their hearts rising into their throats and a chill run down their spines as people jumped from 80+ stories up to avoid burning alive. They don’t know or understand the significance of what the passengers on United Flight 93 did, and they aren’t moved, as I am to this day, by the words “Let’s roll!” They may have seen some brief video or images, but they didn’t live it. And I suspect that their parents and teachers, in many cases, didn’t spend much time on this topic.
Most of the rest of this post is, with minor changes, what I’ve posted in past years on this grim anniversary. It’s my hope that someone will stumble across this page who is too young to remember or who has forgotten, and that it will have an impact on them. If you know such a person, share your memories from that day. Show them this post and other information about what happened and why. Maybe watch United 93 with them.
Seventeen years ago this morning, we watched in horror as people jumped a thousand feet to their deaths because it was better than the alternative. Later that day, we learned that the heroic passengers of United Flight 93, knowing the fate that awaited them, had fought and died to prevent their plane from crashing into the White House or Capitol. In the ensuing days, we learned the details of that brave struggle, and “Let’s roll!” became a phrase that brought goosebumps to me whenever I heard it.
We must not forget the events of September 11, 2001. We must keep the images fresh in our memories. It’s necessary, I believe, if we’re to retain the resolve we need to understand, oppose, and defeat the ongoing Islamofascist effort to destroy our way of life, of which the attacks of 9/11 were a part.
We must not forget that there is a large, powerful, well-financed international movement dedicated to destroying Western Civilization.
On September 11, 2001, barbarians with box cutters — primitive 7th-century savages who could never build a World Trade Center or a 747, but whose insane ideology is dedicated to making the building of such things impossible — murdered 2,996 innocent people and changed Lower Manhattan from this:
to this:
Never forget.
Never forget.
Never, ever forget.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: 911, al qaeda, barbarism, flight 93, heroism, islamofascism, new york, terrorism, twin towers, war, world trade center, wtc | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on September 11, 2017
Sixteen years have passed since that awful September 11th morning. That means most of this year’s college freshmen were two. They have no memory of what happened to the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and to the Pentagon. They don’t know or understand the significance of what the passengers on Flight 93 did, and they aren’t moved, as I am to this day, by the words “Let’s roll!” They may have seen some brief video or images, but they didn’t live it. And I suspect that their parents and teachers, in many cases, didn’t spend much time on this topic.
Most of the rest of this post is, with minor changes, what I’ve posted in past years on this grim anniversary. It’s my hope that someone will stumble across this page who is too young to remember or who has forgotten, and that it will have an impact on them. If you know such a person, share your memories from that day. Show them this post and other information about what happened and why. Maybe watch United 93 with them.
Sixteen years ago this morning, we watched in horror as people jumped a thousand feet to their deaths because it was better than the alternative. Later that day, we learned that the heroic passengers of United Flight 93, knowing the fate that awaited them, had fought and died to prevent their plane from crashing into the White House or Capitol. In the ensuing days, we learned the details of that brave struggle, and “Let’s roll!” became a phrase that brought goosebumps to me whenever I heard it.
We must not forget the events of September 11, 2001. We must keep the images fresh in our memories. It’s necessary, I believe, if we’re to retain the resolve we need to understand, oppose, and defeat the ongoing Islamofascist effort to destroy our way of life, of which the attacks of 9/11 were a part.
We must not forget that there is a large, powerful, well-financed international movement dedicated to destroying Western Civilization.
On September 11, 2001, barbarians with box cutters — primitive 7th-century savages who could never build a World Trade Center or a 747, but whose insane ideology is dedicated to making the building of such things impossible — murdered 2,996 innocent people and changed Lower Manhattan from this:
to this:
Never forget.
Never forget.
Never, ever forget.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: 911, al qaeda, barbarism, flight 93, heroism, islamofascism, new york, terrorism, twin towers, war, world trade center, wtc | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on September 11, 2016
Fifteen years have passed since that awful September 11th morning. Many millennials have no meaningful recollection of it, and apparently their parents and teachers did nothing to inform and educate them. They haven’t seen the video or images (or saw just fleeting glimpses with no context) of what happened to the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and to the Pentagon. They don’t know or understand the significance of what the passengers on Flight 93 did, and they aren’t moved, as I am to this day, by the words “Let’s roll!”
That might explain (but not excuse) a mattress store advertising its “twin towers” mattress sale with a spoof in which two “towers” of mattresses collapse. Nothing can explain or excuse what Comedy Central did, as reported on Twitter by Tabitha Bliss, since apparently mature adult entertainment industry professionals approved and aired it. I refuse to view it and hope you won’t either, but here is her tweet:
Comedy Central Jokes About People Burning Alive In the Twin Towers on September 11th https://t.co/am2cNhxnfv
— Ƭαвιтнα Ɓℓιѕѕ ❤ (@BlissTabitha) September 11, 2016
Most of the rest of this post is, with minor changes, what I’ve posted in past years on this grim anniversary. It’s my hope that someone will stumble across this page who is too young to remember or who has forgotten, and that it will have an impact on them.
But before moving on to that portion, let me suggest that you read an Esquire article by Tom Junod entitled The Falling Man. It’s about one of the most horrifying aspects of that horrifying day. It’s about something that to this day wrenches my gut and makes my eyes well up when I think about it or see images of it, and which caused me some years ago to struggle to create lyrics for a song in my head that, if I had any musical talent, would have been recorded by now. It’s about this picture, and the countless others who did what the man in it did, but perhaps not quite as well.
Some people have forgotten now
It was many years ago
And peaceful here at home since then
So just let the memory go
But I close my eyes and see it still
Like it was yesterday — Oh no!
People jumping from a hundred-story building!
I can still see those Americans
Jumping from a hundred-story building …
© 2009 Richard G. Combs. All rights reserved.
Fifteen years ago this morning, we watched in horror as people jumped a thousand feet to their deaths because it was better than the alternative. Later that day, we learned that the heroic passengers of United Flight 93, knowing the fate that awaited them, had fought and died to prevent their plane from crashing into the White House or Capitol. In the ensuing days, we learned the details of that brave struggle, and “Let’s roll!” became a phrase that brought goosebumps to me whenever I heard it.
We must not forget the events of September 11, 2001. We must keep the images fresh in our memories. It’s necessary, I believe, if we’re to retain the resolve we need to understand, oppose, and defeat the ongoing Islamofascist effort to destroy our way of life, of which the attacks of 9/11 were a part.
We must not forget that there is a large, powerful, well-financed international movement dedicated to destroying Western Civilization.
On September 11, 2001, barbarians with box cutters — primitive 7th-century savages who could never build a World Trade Center or a 747, but whose insane ideology is dedicated to making the building of such things impossible — murdered 2,996 innocent people and changed Lower Manhattan from this:
to this:
Never forget.
Never forget.
Never, ever forget.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: 911, al qaeda, barbarism, flight 93, heroism, islamofascism, new york, terrorism, twin towers, war, world trade center, wtc | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on September 11, 2015
Fourteen years ago this morning, we watched in horror as people jumped a thousand feet to their deaths because it was better than the alternative. Later that day, we learned that the heroic passengers of United Flight 93, knowing the fate that awaited them, had fought and died to prevent their plane from crashing into the White House or Capitol. In the ensuing days, we learned the details of that brave struggle, and “Let’s roll!” became a phrase that brought goosebumps to me whenever I heard it.
We must not forget the events of September 11, 2001. We must keep the images fresh in our memories. It’s necessary, I believe, if we’re to retain the resolve we need to understand, oppose, and defeat the ongoing Islamofascist effort to destroy our way of life, of which the attacks of 9/11 were a part.
We must not forget that there is a large, powerful, well-financed international movement dedicated to destroying Western Civilization.
On September 11, 2001, barbarians with box cutters — primitive 7th-century savages who could never build a World Trade Center or a 747, but whose insane ideology is dedicated to making the building of such things impossible — murdered 2,996 innocent people and changed Lower Manhattan from this:
to this:
Some people have forgotten now
It was many years ago
And peaceful here at home since then
So just let the memory go
But I close my eyes and see it still
Like it was yesterday — Oh no!
People jumping from a hundred-story building!
I can still see those Americans
Jumping from a hundred-story building …
© 2009 Richard G. Combs. All rights reserved.
Never forget.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: 911, al qaeda, barbarism, heroism, islamofascism, new york, terrorism, war, world trade center, wtc | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on October 2, 2012
In 2011, President Obama ordered the Libyan rebels to be supplied with arms, including anti-tank rockets and mortars. The Saudis were apparently persuaded to act as go-betweens, actually delivering the US-supplied weapons. This was done even though the Obama administration must have known that many of those rebels, including their commander Abdel Hakim Belhadj, were radical Islamist jihadis with ties to al Qaeda (emphasis added):
… Through the 1990s, as leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Belhadj fought Qadhafi’s forces, plotting twice to assassinate him. When it got too hot in Libya, he moved to Sudan, working with al-Qaeda as a guest of Osama bin Laden and then returned to Afghanistan in 1998. He spent the next few years in Jalalabad, directing funds and arms for al-Qaeda training camps before he was arrested by the CIA and MI-6 in 2002. Belhadj was then, according to a lawsuit he filed against the British government, tortured brutally before being bundled on to a plane along with his pregnant wife and handed over to Qadhafi. Eventually, as part of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi’s “de-radicalisation” programme, Belhadj and other associates were freed in 2010. Within a year, he had become the commander of the Transitional National Council (TNC) rebel force.
That the U.S. cooperated with Belhadj and others like him to oust Qadhafi speaks volumes either of its broad-mindedness or its naiveté. Even as the British, French and U.S. intelligence services armed the rebels, they turned a blind eye to the troubling ideological differences they had with the forces fighting Qadhafi — from links with al-Qaeda in the Maghrib, to avowals of the harsh Sharia law they planned to implement in Libya, to the human rights violations by TNC units. Of equal concern should have been the domination of different parts of post-Qadhafi Libya by lawless militias answerable to none.
Instead, NATO leaders proclaimed themselves satisfied that the ends in Libya had been met, a brutal dictator was finished, and that was that. Until a year later, when heavily armed men launched a deadly assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.
Shades of “Fast and Furious.” Was the US consulate attacked, and Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans killed, by al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadis using US-supplied rockets, mortars, and small arms?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: al qaeda, islamofascism, libya, obama, saudis, terrorism | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on September 13, 2012
New York banned large soft drinks today as part of what the AP calls the “war on obesity.” First Lady Michelle Obama is totally on board. On today’s Dr. Oz show, she reiterated her contention that obesity is our nation’s biggest national security threat.
You know, that statement was just plain stupid when she first said it in 2010. Two days after al Qaeda-orchestrated attacks on our consulate in Benghazi and our embassy in Cairo, the deaths of four Americans, including our ambassador to Libya, and while al Qaeda-inspired mobs are threatening US embassies and citizens throughout the Muslim world, such a statement is not just stupid, it’s offensive. And insane.
Ms. Obama, why don’t you ask the families of J. Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods if they think obesity is our nation’s biggest national security threat?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: al qaeda, egypt, islamofascism, libya, muslim outrage, obama, obesity | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on September 12, 2012
The Obama administration and their media lapdogs are more interested in condemning Mitt Romney than in condemning the 7th-century barbarian jihadists who attacked a US embassy and consulate, killing a US ambassador and three of his staff. They’re no doubt also making sure that their media lapdogs divert attention away from their shameful disinterest in national security leading up to these attacks, including their failure to heed a clear warning that such attacks could be expected (emphasis added):
Islamic mobs that stormed the U.S. Embassy in Egypt and the U.S. consulate in Libya on the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, murdering the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, said they were doing so because they were enraged by an obscure, Internet movie that mocked Muhammed.
But a closer examination of the evidence indicates al-Qaeda orchestrated these attacks, and the movie was just a bogus excuse used to trigger the widespread violence. Even worse, it seems al-Qaeda telegraphed these attacks, and the Obama administration still got caught flat-footed, unaware of the terror group’s strength in the region, missing key signals and clues that were out in the open.
One day before September 11, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahri posted a 42-minute video on Jihadist forums urging Libyans to attack Americans to avenge the death of Abu Yahya al-Libi, the terror organization’s second-in-command, whom U.S. drones killed in June of 2012 in Pakistan.
In the video, al-Zawahri said al-Libi’s “blood is calling, urging and inciting you to fight and kill the Crusaders,” leading up to a date heralded and celebrated by radical Islamists.
Another version of the video was actually posted on YouTube on September 9 and yet, President Barack Obama, who has not attended an intelligence briefing since September 5, and his administration did not beef up security at the embassy and consulate on September 11. There were no Marines present to protect Americans abroad, as the Islamic mobs overwhelmed what little security presence there was.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: al qaeda, egypt, hillary, islamofascism, libya, muslim brotherhood, muslim outrage, obama, terrorism | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on September 11, 2011
Ten years ago this morning, we watched in horror as people jumped a thousand feet to their deaths because it was better than the alternative. Later that day, we learned that the heroic passengers of United Flight 93, knowing the fate that awaited them, had fought and died to prevent their plane from crashing into the White House or Capitol. In the ensuing days, we learned the details of that brave struggle, and "Let's roll!" became a phrase that brought goosebumps to me whenever I heard it.
We must not forget the events of September 11, 2001. We must keep the images fresh in our memories. It's necessary, I believe, if we're to retain the resolve we need to understand, oppose, and defeat the ongoing Islamofascist effort to destroy our way of life, of which the attacks of 9/11 were a part.
We must not forget that there is a large, powerful, well-financed international movement dedicated to destroying Western Civilization.
On September 11, 2001, barbarians with box cutters — primitive 7th-century savages who could never build a World Trade Center or a 747, but whose insane ideology is dedicated to making the building of such things impossible — murdered 2,996 innocent people and changed Lower Manhattan from this:
to this:
Some people have forgotten now
It was many years ago
And peaceful here at home since then
So just let the memory go
But I close my eyes and see it still
Like it was yesterday — Oh no!
People jumping from a hundred-story building!
I can still see those Americans
Jumping from a hundred-story building …
© 2009 Richard G. Combs. All rights reserved.
Never forget.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: 911, al qaeda, barbarism, heroism, islamofascism, new york, terrorism, war, world trade center, wtc | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on May 2, 2011
Something happened tonight that hasn't happened in a long time: the President spoke, and I cheered.
Osama bin Laden, hunted as the mastermind behind the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, has been killed, President Obama announced tonight.
The president called the killing of bin Laden the "most significant achievement to date" in the effort to defeat al Qaeda.
Bin Laden was located at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which was monitored and when the time was determined to be right, the president said, he authorized a "targeted operation."
"A small team of Americans carried out the operation," Obama said. "After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body."
DNA testing confirmed that it was bin Laden, sources told ABC News.
Hurrah, hurrah! Now where's that SOB Zawahiri?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: al qaeda, bin laden, good news, justice, obama | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on September 11, 2010
Nine years ago this morning, we watched in horror as people jumped a thousand feet to their deaths because it was better than the alternative. Later that day, we learned that the heroic passengers of United Flight 93, knowing the fate that awaited them, had fought and died to prevent their plane from crashing into the White House or Capitol. In the ensuing days, we learned the details of that brave struggle, and "Let's roll!" became a phrase that brought goosebumps to me whenever I heard it.
Last night, I watched a compelling one-hour retrospective by Fox News that refreshed my memories of that day. It will be shown again later today (see my previous post), and I'll watch it again, and this time record it. It refreshed my memory in disturbing, but valuable, ways. No, those weren't bodies falling from the towers — they were living human beings with their arms and legs flailing as they fell. It's important, I think, that these details remain clear.
We must not let ourselves forget the events of September 11, 2001. We must keep the images fresh in our memories. It's necessary, I believe, if we're to retain the resolve we need to understand, oppose, and defeat the ongoing Islamofascist effort to destroy our way of life, of which the attacks of 9/11 were a part.
I have nothing more to add to last year's 9/11 post, so with one minor edit, it appears again below.
Never forget that there is a large, powerful, well-financed international movement dedicated to destroying Western Civilization.
On September 11, 2001, barbarians with box cutters — primitive 7th-century savages who could never build a World Trade Center or a 747, but whose insane ideology is dedicated to making the building of such things impossible — murdered 2,996 innocent people and changed Lower Manhattan from this:
to this:
Some people have forgotten now
It was many years ago
And peaceful here at home since then
So just let the memory go
But I close my eyes and see it still
Like it was yesterday — Oh no!
People jumping from a hundred-story building!
I can still see those Americans
Jumping from a hundred-story building …
© 2009 Richard G. Combs. All rights reserved.
As I have on previous September 11ths, I offer you passage from Gerard Van der Leun's Of a Fire in a Field — a passage that moves me beyond words every time I read it — in which he recalled 9/11 and its aftermath, when he lived in New York:
Inside the wire under the hole in the sky was, in time, a growing hole in the ground as the rubble was cleared away and, after many months, the last fire was put out. Often at first, but with slowly diminishing frequency, all the work to clear out the rubble and the wreckage would come to a halt.
The machinery would be shut down and it would become quiet. Across the site, tools would be laid down and the workers would straighten up and stand still. Then, from somewhere in the pile or the pit, a group of men would emerge carrying a stretcher covered with an American flag and holding, if they were fortunate, a body. If they were not so fortunate the flag covering over the stretcher would be lumpy, holding only portions of a body from which, across the river on the Jersey shore, a forensic lab would try to make an identification and then pass on to the victim's survivors something that they could bury.
I'm not sure anymore about the final count, but I am pretty sure that most families, in the end, got nothing. Their loved ones had all gone into the smoke and the dust that covered the end of the island and blew, mostly, across the river into Brooklyn where I lived. What happened to most of the three thousand killed by the animals on that day? It is simple and ghastly. We breathed them until the rains came and washed clean what would never be clean again.
. . .
Read the whole thing — and think about the question he asks you at the end.
And never forget.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: 911, al qaeda, barbarism, heroism, islamofascism, new york, terrorism, war, world trade center, wtc | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on May 5, 2010
David Harsanyi noticed that lots of people on the left were ready and willing to point a finger at “right-wingers” when the identity of the Times Square bomber was unknown. But now that the real perpetrator has been caught, they’re remarkably reluctant to talk about the global army to which he belongs (emphasis added):
Even as investigators were hunting for the perpetrator of the botched “man-caused disaster” in Times Square, our cool Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was reassuring a frazzled nation that the failed bombing appeared to be an isolated incident — a “one-off” — and avoided the notion of (much less the word) “terrorism.”
…
“If I had to guess 25 cents, this would be exactly that,” explained Mayor Michael Bloomberg — who has plenty of quarters to spare — during the investigation’s early stages. “Homegrown, or maybe a mentally deranged person, or somebody with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health care bill or something. It could be anything.”
It could be anything, said the mayor of New York City. A mentally deranged person, perhaps? Maybe some crazy from the fundamentalist faction of around 56 percent of us who opposed health-care reform. After all, in the deep recesses of some imaginations, conservatives are not above murdering hundreds of tourists to make a point about Obamacare.
Of course, it turned out to be a Pakistani-American who’d moved his family to that country, returned there 13 times, and recently came back to the US after several months in an Islamic jihadist terrorist training camp learning how to make bombs. But the left (including the current administration) refuses to use words like “Islamist,” “jihadist,” or even “terrorist.”
In fact, upon learning that the bomber wasn’t a Tea Party member, Mayor Bloomberg’s first concern was that Pakistanis and Muslims not be treated unfairly because one of them was the perpetrator. The good mayor has certainly never expressed such concern regarding Tea Party members or opponents of government-controlled health care.
Here’s the nasty truth: the far left — including the current administration, most of the leadership of the Socialist Democrat Party, and the majority of the mainstream media — considers conservatives and libertarians to be the real, dangerous enemy. They view Islamofascism either as nothing but a minor nuisance or as an understandable effort to diminish America’s illegitimate power in the world.
In the last two major terrorist attacks — Times Square and the Christmas airline bombing attempt — we were incredibly lucky. Regarding the Shazad attempt, the Homeland Security folks are all congratulating each other, but they have no reason whatsoever to do so. If Shazad had remembered his lessons better, there would have been carnage in Times Square. If just a few more minutes had passed, he’d have gotten clean away. They got lucky on all counts.
Their luck is going to run out.
The Socialist Democrats and their shills in the media are more concerned about those who oppose their domestic political agenda than they are about the global movement they refuse to even name — an Islamist movement that has declared war on this country and is committed to its destruction. This is insane. And in the case of those who took an oath of office, it’s a serious dereliction of duty.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: al qaeda, islamofascism, jihad, leftists, new york, terrorism | 2 Comments »
Posted by Richard on April 9, 2010
Qatari diplomat Mohammed Al-Madadi caused a bomb scare on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Denver Wednesday night. Reportedly, Al-Madadi sneaked a smoke in the john. When confronted, he joked (supposedly) that he'd been trying to light his shoe.
Ha, ha.
The flight ended up being accompanied to DIA by F-16s, and the passengers spent many hours being debriefed at a location quite distant from the terminal.
Now, it turns out that Al-Madadi was on his way to see an imprisoned al Qaeda agent, Ali Al-Marri.
So here's the obvious question: was Al-Madadi simply behaving stupidly or was he obtaining intelligence about U.S. air security measures?
I'm inclined to invoke Hanlon's Law (which may actually owe its genesis to Heinlein): Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
More than likely, Al-Madadi is just the typical arrogant Arab male, for whom saving face is paramount and who has no conception of how much concern and fear he's caused.
But, but … it could be a scouting mission. Another probing of our defenses. There have been a number of incidents, harking back at least to the Minneapolis "flying imams" incident, that could be interpreted as attempts to test our air defenses and gather intelligence about our reactions to various potential threats.
Who knows? That's one of the terrible problems with this new form of war in which we're involved (and please remember that it's a war that was declared by our enemies, so we have no choice in the matter). The enemy is waging that war in the most unconventional ways of which it can conceive. It's hard to determine who the enemy is, where the theater of war is, and what exactly is an act of war. And they like it that way.
Is Mohammed Al-Madadi an undercover enemy combatant, a secret al Qaeda agent, or just an obtuse, clueless, arrogant, privileged-class Arab? I don't know. I'm not sure anyone does.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: air travel, al qaeda, islamofascism, stupidity | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on March 2, 2010
The Act! for America 5280 Coalition is sponsoring multiple appearances in the Denver area this week by Dr. Tawfik Hamid, a physician, former terrorist, and author of The Roots of Jihad and Inside Jihad: Understanding and Confronting Radical Islam. Public appearances include lectures Tuesday evening at Regis University, Thursday evening at the University of Colorado, and Friday evening at University Park United Methodist Church. On Tuesday, Dr. Hamid will be a guest on KHOW radio's Peter Boyles show from 7-8 AM and the Caplis/Silverman show from 4-4:30 PM.
Check the 5280 Coalition's calendar for the complete schedule and more about the events, including maps to the locations.
More about Dr. Hamid:
… Born in Egypt to a secular Muslim family, Tawfik Hamid joined the extremist Islamic group Jamma’a Islameia in Cairo when he was a student in medical school. In his studies he was learning to heal, but in his thoughts, as he says, “I dreamed to die for Allah and to share in terrorist acts.” One of Dr. Hamid's colleague in these formative days of the terror movement was Dr. Al Zawaherri, then an acquaintance with whom Tawfik used to pray, and now the number two person of Al Qaeda.
Just before heading for further training in Afghanistan, Dr. Hamid began to question the hatred and impulses to violence that participation in extremist Islam was fomenting within him. He decided to leave the terror movement, became a physician, and also became a scholar of Islamic texts. As he began to preach in Mosques to promote a message of peace instead of violence and hatred however, he himself became a target of the Islamic extremists who had been his friends. They threatened his life, forcing him and his family to flee Egypt, and then Saudi Arabia. As Dr. Hamid says "The powers of darkness were overwhelming and I was forced to emigrate with my family to the West seeking freedom."
Because of his insider understanding of terrorist mentality, Dr. Hamid predicted the Twin Towers (9-11) attacks several years before they occurred. Now his mission has become to educate the West against Islamic Fundamentalism, which he regards as a cancer that is spreading with frightening rapidity across the globe today.
Dr. Hamid also seeks within Islam to build new thinking to overcome the hatred and violent extremism that have metastasized within his religious tradition.
UPDATE: Fox 31 KDVR aired a short interview with Dr. Hamid tonight. Reporter Leland Vitter was quite impressed, telling the anchors he spoke with Dr. Hamid for 15 minutes and wished it could have been an hour. No video on the website yet, but there's a brief story.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: al qaeda, colorado, denver, education, islam, islamofascism, jihad | 3 Comments »
