Dr. Tawfik Hamid, a physician and former radical Islamist, says we must deny terrorists any semblance of a Caliphate overseas and also criminalize the teaching of radical forms of Islam that result in violence if we are to genuinely win the so called war on terror in our time.
When asked on Breitbart News Daily by host Stephen K. Bannon what he most wanted to hear from candidates at tonight’s Republican debate, Hamid, also author of “Inside Jihad: Understanding and Confronting Radical Islam,” said he wanted to know:
[W]hat will be different in (their) approach to the phenomenon of radical Islam because we have been trying traditional military warfare “for years” and the outcome was simply we failed to contain al Qaeda and ISIS and the radical groups and now they are controlling much bigger areas in the world. So, what will be different … to allow us to end this disease of radical Islam?
Secondly, Hamid said he wanted to know if a candidate is going to consider those who “teach the ideology of hatred that breeds and creates terrorism as supporters of terror?” Hamid says that the war on terror must extend to all “countries and organizations that teach the ideology that clearly contributes to the creation of terrorism, hatred and barbarism.”
Hamid also said that defeating Jihadists geographically and denying them any type of formal Caliphate is “the most critical step to defeat the radical psychologically is to dismantle their Caliphate.” He believes that that geographical defeat denying them a Caliphate, along with effective messaging empowered by the Internet age, can effectively win the war on terror, ultimately, by turning people away from Islam in its more radical forms.
In terms of the domestic was against terrorism, Hamid said he wants to know if candidates are going to consider the teaching of radical Islam a crime,”or will they just do nothing, as we have seen till this moment?” Hamid believes religious teaching that leads to violence should be criminalized, including within certain U.S.-based mosques and Muslim centers of education that teach a radical form of Islam resulting in terrorism.
Hamid also discussed elements of his recent book yesterday on Breitbart News Daily.
Hamid discusses his conversion to radical Islam as a medical student and his occasional meetings with al Qaeda leader-to-be, Ayman al-Zawahiri, when he was still a promising doctor.
During the interview with host Stephen K. Bannon, Hamid also explains he abandonded radical Islam after he was recruited to kidnap an Egyptian police officer and bury him alive beside a mosque. Hamid says his “human conscience” rejected the idea and told him “something was wrong here,” as far as the interpretation of Islam he had come to embrace.
Today’s entire interview can be heard below.
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