Author and activist Zak Ebrahim talks about growing up in a household with his father El-Sayyid Nosair, who ended up becoming a radicalized Muslim and convicted terrorist in connection with the World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
Ebrahim recalls being a young child when his father shot and killed the leader of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), Rabbi Meir Kahane, in a New York City hotel in 1990.
He says his mother learned of the shooting during a live TV report that also explained that the shooter was wounded in a shootout with police and that neither of the men was expected to survive. “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,” he said.
His father was sent to Riker’s Island prison after the shooting, and he recalls making visits there with his mother. “Her main concern was finding out from him whether he accepted guilt for his action or if he was claiming his innocence – at the time he claimed his innocence – and she believed him.”
Ebrahim said he would later attend some of the meetings at mosques with his father, at which radicalized views were preached. “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,” he added. “So I grew up harboring negative stereotypes about pretty much any person who wasn’t just like me.”
Watch the full episode for more details about Ebrahim’s unusual upbringing, an to hear the reasons he chose not to follow in his father’s footsteps of extremism.
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