Author and activist Zak Ebrahim talks about growing up in the shadow of his convicted terrorist father, El Sayyid Nosair, and explains how his dad first got involved with radicalized Muslims in the United States.
“They cut to a clip of my father laying in a pool of blood, and that was essentially my mother’s first introduction into this radical ideology that my father had been following,” said Ebrahim, who writes about this violent incident in which his father shot and killed the leader of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), Rabbi Meir Kahane, in a New York City hotel in 1990.
Ebrahim explains his childhood growing up in Pittsburgh and New York at a time when his father was facing several adversities before he started attending meetings at mosques that preached radicalized Muslim views. At one point a woman who wanted to convert to Islam was living with the family and ended up accusing his father of raping her.
“It seemed that she was not telling the truth, but his reputation in the Muslim community was destroyed. And I think that certainly left a negative mark on him – irrationally blaming the West or America for the trouble that he’d had,” Ebrahim said.
He also recalls that his father had an accident at work during which he was electrocuted and suffered lasting injuries. He received third degree burns on his arm, and was unable to work and was sent home on painkillers and anti-depressants,” he said about his father’s condition. “As my mother would tell me later, he became very withdrawn and very depressed, and unfortunately that was around the exact same time that be began going to the mosque and listening to sermons by radical men like Omar Rahman.”
Ebrahim adds that later on, he also attended such gatherings with his father. “We spent many nights at the mosque, with these men, and listening to them, discussing politics, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and all sort of different topics that fomented the emotions of the men there.
“My father basically did what many people who become fanaticized do, they try to isolate you and convince you that anyone who isn’t like yourself is evil and a potential threat. So I grew up harboring negative stereotypes about pretty much any person who wasn’t just like me.”
Watch the full episode for more about Ebrahim’s unusual upbringing in a household headed by a radicalized Muslim who acted out by conspiring in the World Trade Center bombing plot.
Comments