November 3, 2006.
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.”
Hamid drank in the message of Jihadism while at medical school in Cairo, and
devoted himself to the cause. His group began meeting in a small room. Then a
larger one. Then a Mosque reserved for followers of al-Zawahiri. By the time
Hamid left the movement, its members were intimidating other students who
were unsympathetic.
He is now 45 years old, and has had many years to reflect on why he was
willing to die and kill for his religion. “The first thing you have to understand is
that it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with poverty or lack of
education,” he says. “I was from a middle-class family and my parents were not
religious. Hardly anyone in the movement at university came from a background
that was different from mine.
“I’ve heard this poverty nonsense time and time again from Western apologists
for Islam, most of them not Muslim by the way. There are millions of passive
supporters of terror who may be poor and needy but most of those who do the
killing are wealthy, privileged, educated and free. If it were about poverty, ask
yourself why it is middle-class Muslims — and never poor Christians — who
become suicide bombers in Palestine.”
His analysis is fascinating. Muslim fundamentalists believe, he insists, that
Saudi Arabia’s petroleum-based wealth is a divine gift, and that Saudi influence
is sanctioned by Allah. Thus the extreme brand of Sunni Islam that spread from
the Kingdom to the rest of the Islamic world is regarded not merely as one
interpretation of the religion but the only genuine interpretation. The expansion
of violent and regressive Islam, he continues, began in the late 1970s, and can
be traced precisely to the growing financial clout of Saudi Arabia.
“We’re not talking about a fringe cult here,” he tells me. “Salafist
Islam is the dominant version of the religion and is taught in
almost every Islamic university in the world. It is puritanical, extreme and does,
yes, mean that women can be beaten, apostates killed and Jews called pigs
and monkeys.”
He leans back, takes a deep breath and moves to another area, one that he
says is far too seldom discussed:
“North Americans are too squeamish about discussing the obvious
sexual dynamic behind suicide bombings. If they understood contemporary
Islamic society, they would understand the sheer sexual tension of Sunni
Muslim men. Look at the figures for suicide bombings and see how few are
from the Shiite world. Terrorism and violence yes, but not suicide. The
overwhelming majority are from Sunnis. Now within the Shiite world there are
what is known as temporary marriages, lasting anywhere from an hour to 95
years. It enables men to release their sexual frustrations.
“Islam condemns extra-marital sex as well as masturbation, which is also taught
in the Christian tradition. But Islam also tells of unlimited sexual ecstasy in
paradise with beautiful virgins for the martyr who gives his life for the faith.
Don’t for a moment underestimate this blinding passion or its influence on those
who accept fundamentalism.”
A pause. “I know. I was one who accepted it.”
This partial explanation is shocking more for its banality than its horror. Mass
murder provoked partly by simple lust. But it cannot be denied that letters
written by suicide bombers frequently dwell on waiting virgins and sexual
gratification.
“The sexual aspect is, of course, just one part of this. But I can tell you what it
is not about. Not about Israel, not about Iraq, not about Afghanistan. They are
mere excuses. Algerian Muslim fundamentalists murdered 150,000 other
Algerian Muslims, sometimes slitting the throats of children in front of their
parents. Are you seriously telling me that this was because of Israel’s treatment
of the Palestinians or American foreign policy?”
He’s exasperated now, visibly angry at what he sees as a willful Western
foolishness. “Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They’re
slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history,
your institutions, your churches. Why can’t you realize that it has nothing to do
with what you have done but with what they want.”
Then he leaves — for where, he cannot say. A voice that is silenced in its
homeland and too often ignored by those who prefer convenient revision to
disturbing truth. The tragedy is that Tawfik Hamid is almost used to it.
