Politician Calls Us ‘Anti-Islam’ for Exposing His Terror Ties

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On April 20th, I emailed the campaign of ‘Adam’ Hisham Hamawy, an Egyptian Muslim plastic surgeon running for Congress in New Jersey, asking him three questions about his ties to Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the ‘Blind Sheikh’ whose followers had bombed the World Trade Center and plotted to blow up the Statue of Liberty and other landmarks in the ‘Monuments plot’.

1. What was your relationship with Sheikh Rahman? How long had you known him before the ride?
2. How did you come to be asked to testify at the trial?
3. Do you still stand by your testimony?

Hamawy never got back to me. Four days later, Freedom Center Investigates ran the story exposing the congressional candidate’s relationship with an Islamic terrorist leader, his closeness to a man whom an FBI informant noted had paranoid security, and the politician’s testimony on the terrorist leader’s behalf at one of New York City’s biggest terror trials.

The story has since gone viral, appearing across social media, and was picked up by FOX News, the Free Beacon, Politico and local media in New Jersey. Rather than answer questions, Hamawy and his campaign have blamed ‘Islamophobia’ and accused us of being ‘anti-Islam’.

“’Hamawy’s campaign pointed out that the initial story was written in FrontPage Magazine, a website affiliated with the anti-Islam David Horowitz Freedom Center, and called it ‘guilt-by-association attacks on Muslim and Arab candidates,” media outlets reported.

David Horowitz had long called out ‘Islamophobia’ as a dishonest dodge by Islamists and their political allies to cover up their extremism while silencing those who point it out, and Hamawy’s efforts to hide his past by calling us “anti-Islam” show how how right he was all over again.

Follow-up reporting by the Free Beacon showed that contrary to Hamawy’s protestations that linking him to the notorious terror leader was “anti-Islam” and “guilt by association”, he had enjoyed  “a yearslong relationship” with Sheikh Rahman, and stayed together in the same room at a hotel while attending a Jihadist conference featuring a Hamas recruiter and Osama bin Laden ally along with calls for the destruction of America. Hamawy admitted in his testimony in defense of the ‘Blind Sheikh’ that he had talked “about conquering the land of the infidels”.

In his Wall Street Journal op-ed, former Judge Michael Mukasey, who presided over the sheikh’s terror trial, wrote that, “Mr. Hamawy was more than a casual traveling companion of Abdel Rahman. He met the Blind Sheikh in 1991 after the cleric had already been charged with providing the spiritual authority for the 1981 assassination of [Egyptian president] Mubarak’s predecessor, Anwar Sadat, although an Egyptian court acquitted him of direct involvement in that crime. Mr. Hamawy attended several of Abdel Rahman’s sermons, visited the cleric in his home before his trial and provided him with translation services. Mr. Hamawy began his trial testimony with the greeting ‘salam alaykum’ addressed to the defendant.”

After being confronted by reporters, Hamawy argued that the Egyptian Muslim terror leader “was a leader of the community that talks about how to pray, how to wash, how to practice as a normal Muslim. … He wasn’t preaching death and destruction all the time.”

But according to Hamawy, asking any questions about a politician running for higher office who was hanging out with one of the worst terrorists in the country is “anti-Islam”.

Was it ‘anti-Islam’ or ‘Islamophobic’ of me to ask Hamawy about his relationship with a terror leader whom the congressional candidate admitted at the trial had “always talked about” how “Muslims had to do jihad against the enemies of Islam” and “talked about jihad”?

So much for Hamawy’s claim that this is just “guilt by association”.

And is it ‘Anti-Islam’ of me to ask the follow-up question to the questions that Hamawy never answered as to whether he was personally acquainted with any of figures in the various terror plots surrounding the ‘Blind Sheikh’? Considering that Islamic terrorists involved in the World Trade Center bombing and other terror plots frequented the two mosques, one in Brooklyn and one in New Jersey, that Rahman was associated with, the question is a reasonable one.

And that’s why no one in the media will ask it.

Even though the New York Times had reported on Hamawy’s testimony at the Blind Sheikh’s trial back in the 1990s, the newspaper has refused to cover the story today.

My follow-up questions to Hamawy will inquire whether he had known Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali, a cab driver in Jersey City, who functioned as Rahman’s translator. Since Hamawy claimed to have also helped Rahman with translations, did he know Siddig Ali, named as the ringleader of the ‘Monuments Plot’ to bomb the Statue of Liberty, the United Nations and other targets?

Was Hamawy at any time aware that Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and the men around him were not just, as he put it, talking about Jihad, but were actively planning to carry them out.

Was he at any time aware of any such plots or talk of possible terror attacks here or in Egypt?

I don’t expect Hamawy to answer me, but as he’s already learned, trying to stonewall us will not work. Neither will accusing us of being ‘Anti-Islam’. We will not stop until we get to the truth.

This is not the first time that Islamists have tried to silence us by calling the David Horowitz Freedom Center ‘Islamophobes’, not because we’re wrong, but because we’re right.