**Live from Florida- the 2007 Secular Islam Summit
Day 1- Late Afternoon
March 4, 2007
Former Al-Zawahiri associate, Tawfik Hamid spoke on the dangers of radical Islam at the Secular Islam Summit on March 4, 2007.
Via the Secular Islam Summit:
Tawfik Hamid – Born in Egypt to a secular Muslim family, as a teenager Tawfik Hamid joined Jammaa Islameia, a terrorist organization led then by Ayman al Zawahiri. Hamid was chosen by this organization to debate and criticize Christians. To fulfill this role he started to read the Bible and began to realize his fundamental disagreements with terrorism. Hamid then began speaking regularly in mosques where he developed a peaceful understanding of Islam that is compatible with human rights. Hamid is now a medical doctor who also holds degrees in psychology and education. In media interviews and at lectures at UCLA, Stanford and Georgetown University, Hamid speaks out against jihadism. His most recent book is The Roots of Jihad.
** Tawfik also is looking to relocate to the United States. He needs support!
Here- Tawfik Hamid is introduced by one of the organizers of the Intelligence Summit and gives a very moving 3 minute speech to the audience on March 4, 2007:
(3 minutes)
Tawfik is one of several Muslim speakers scheduled at the first Secular Islam Summit in Florida.
This video clip is also posted on YouTube Here.
The Intelligence Summit is helping to sponsor this powerful event.
Here is a bit more on Dr. Tawfik Hamid from the National Post:
Dr. Tawfik Hamid doesn’t tell people where he lives. Not the street, not the city, not even the country. It’s safer that way. It’s only the letters of testimony from some of the highest intelligence officers in the Western world that enable him to move freely. This medical doctor, author and activist once was a member of Egypt’s Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya (Arabic for “the Islamic Group”), a banned terrorist organization. He was trained under Ayman al-Zawahiri, the bearded jihadi who appears in Bin Laden’s videos, telling the world that Islamic violence will stop only once we all become Muslims.
He’s a disarmingly gentle and courteous man. But he’s determined to tell a complacent North America what he knows about fundamentalist Muslim imperialism.
“Yes, ‘imperialism,’ ” he tells me. “The deliberate and determined expansion of militant Islam and its attempt to triumph not only in the Islamic world but in Europe and North America. Pure ideology. Muslim terrorists kill and slaughter not because of what they experience but because of what they believe.”
Previously:
Live Blogging From the 2007 Secular Islam Summit
Secular Islam Summit: Reason, Not Revelation
Secular Islam Summit: Rediscovering Secular Traditions
