TORONTO — An Egyptian Muslim who was once a member of a banned terrorist organization in Egypt told a synagogue audience in Toronto last week that Islamic radicalism is a mainstream ideology in contemporary Islam.
Tawfiq Hamid [Greg Tjepkema photo]
Tawfik Hamid, now a Muslim reformer, joined the Al-Gama al-Islamiyya movement when he was a medical student in Cairo in the 1980s.
Until it renounced bloodshed in 2003, Al-Gama al-Islamiyya called for the overthrow of the Egyptian government, tried to assassinate Egypt’s president and carried out a succession of terrorist attacks culminating with the murder of 58 foreign tourists in Luxor in 1997.
Speaking at Beth Tzedec Congregation in front of a capacity crowd of about 800, the scion of a secular middle-class family related his personal story and warned of the dangers of Islamic militancy.
Considered an authority on the mindset of jihadi Muslims following the publication of his book, Inside Jihad: Understanding and Confronting Radical Islam, Hamid said that Islamic radicalism will remain at the centre of modern Islam until an alternative form of Islam emerges.
“Current mainstream Islamic teachings promote violence,” he said.
A physician who lives in the United States, he has written that scholars in prestigious Islamic institutes and universities compare Jews to pigs and monkeys, call for the fatal stoning of adulterers and urge Muslims to spread Islam by force if necessary.
He has also written: “There is a certain schizophrenia among many Muslims who seem to believe that it is acceptable to teach hatred and violence in the name of their religion, while at the same time expecting the world to respect Islam as ‘a religion of peace, love and harmony.’”
Hamid, an advocate of a peaceful Islam compatible with universal human rights and intellectual freedom, recalled that Al-Gama al-Islamiyya attempted to suppress his faculty for critical thinking, bottle up his sex drive and convince him that Islam is at war with non-Muslims.
He quit after he was asked to take part in the kidnapping of a policeman who would be buried alive and after he concluded that non-Muslims are not infidels who deserve to be killed.
Charging that religious intolerance in the Middle East has been promoted and nurtured by the Salafi brand of Islam originating in Saudi Arabia, Hamid suggested that Muslim extremists have twisted the meaning of the word jihad to denote warfare against so-called infidels.
He added that Muslim radicals have also defined jihad as a national rather than an individual responsibility, thereby sanctioning suicide bombings.
Claiming that Islamic radicalism feeds on the weak, Hamid said that its acolytes perceive concessions as a weakness.
As a rule, he said, Islamic terrorists tend to be highly educated and do not come from impoverished backgrounds.
Members in Islamic radical groups are brainwashed by rote learning and a skewed form of theology, he noted.
Hamid likened the tension between Islamic fundamentalism and the West to a war pitting civilization against barbarism and love against hate.
Turning to Israel, a topic he has addressed in articles published in daily newspapers in the United States, he slammed the perception that the Arab-Israeli conflict breeds terrorism.
And in an astonishing claim, he said the Koran promised the Land of Israel to the Children of Israel.
Briefly touching on Muslim attitudes to Jews, he said, “Anti-Semitism is rising to unbelievable levels.”
Hamid’s speech was presented by The Speakers Action Group and Beth Tzedec’s Men’s Club and sponsored by the National Post, Canadian Jewish Civil Rights Association and the Canadian Committee for the Tel Aviv Foundation.
The moderator, Jonathan Kay, is the comment editor of the National Post.
