TOP SECRET UMBRA

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter is one of those shopworn clichés that, like many such, contains a degree of awkward truth. How we feel about a cause determines how we view misdeeds perpetrated in its name, to a degree.

Not many Americans would be comfortable noting that some of the excesses perpetrated by patriots during the American Revolution, for instance tarring and feathering Loyalists, would be deemed war crimes, even terrorism-adjacent today (with the caveats that all wars bring atrocities and some Loyalists behaved in the same ugly way against their foes: our Revolution was really our first Civil War).

Nevertheless, there are certain extremist groups that, thanks to their bloodthirsty fanaticism, are deemed terrorists by pretty much everybody. In recent decades, Salafi Jihadist outfits like Al-Qa’ida and more recently the Islamic State are considered terrorists and outlaws essentially everywhere, including across the Muslim world. Both those groups are listed as terrorist organizations by the United Nations, with its ostensible global remit.

Therefore, affiliation with those Salafi Jihadist groups, whose rancid ideology I’ve explained at length, is a show-stopper in polite society around the world, or at least it’s supposed to be. I don’t have poll numbers handy but, as we approach the 25^th anniversary of Al-Qa’ida’s world-changing attacks on New York and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, I feel confident stating that the vast majority of Americans believe that affiliation with AQ or IS is unacceptable and merits sanction.

But what if that’s not true anymore? Can Salafi Jihadism be normalized, even in America, in the name of “progress”? A Congressional race in New Jersey raises this uncomfortable question rather directly.

Enter Dr. Adam Hamawy, a New Jersey surgeon who’s running for the Democratic nomination in his state’s 12^th Congressional district. It’s an open contest since Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, who’s held the seat for over a decade, is retiring. It’s a safely Blue district: no Republican has held it in this century, so whichever Democrat secures the nomination will almost certainly head to Congress come January.

Hamawy’s odds in that contested race are looking good. He’s raised more than $1 million for his campaign, considerably more than any of his Democrat rivals in the 12^th district nomination race. Hamawy also recently secured the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s endorsement, a big win for the political neophyte surgeon. He got the personal thumbs-up from numerous Democrats, including progressive stars like Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Hamawy has every reason to feel confident that he will be a member of the U.S. House in a few months, particularly because it’s shaping up to be a good midterm contest for Democrats, who expect to retake the House, and perhaps the Senate, from Republican control as President Donald Trump looks increasingly like a millstone around the GOP’s neck this year.

Moreover, Hamawy’s a fine candidate on paper. Born in Egypt, his family came to America when he was an infant. His immigrant-made-good story is familiar and edifying to voters. After medical school, he served in the U.S. Army as a trauma surgeon, including a deployment to Iraq at the height of our counterinsurgency campaign there. He saved many lives, per Hamawy’s account, including that of Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), then an Army aviator, who lost her legs in Iraq in 2004 when her helicopter was shot down. After military service, including eight years on active duty, Hamawy established a successful plastic surgery practice in Princeton, additionally performing a lot of medical charity work gratis. In all, that’s a great résumé for anyone seeking to enter politics.

Plus, Hamawy is a good fit for today’s Democratic party, where Muslims represent an rising element in their coalition. The recent election of Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim progressive, as mayor of New York heralds a new age for Democrats. This marriage of Islam with Western Leftism isn’t unique – the French call it Islamo-Gauchisme and there are famous novels written about its impact there – yet it seems to be a less awkward partnership between progressives and religion than one might imagine. Leftists are skeptical of traditional religion of all kinds, except Islam, as evidenced by AOC’s photo op yesterday alongside Mayor Mamdani for Eid al-Adha with the Congresswoman donning hijab.

Therefore, Hamawy’s entrance into Democrat politics adheres to the party’s Zeitgeist. However, there have been whispers that the good doctor isn’t merely a pious Muslim, but a radical, indeed an Islamist. His known dislike of Israel doesn’t stand out among today’s Democrats, while the recent denunciation of Hamawy as an Israel-hating anti-Semite and “radical extremist” by a fellow Democrat mayor in New Jersey may be easily dismissed since that mayor is also running for their party’s nomination this year in the 12^th Congressional district.

But what if it’s true?

We already had indications that Hamawy is rather more radical than his gentle public image suggests. Recently, in 2024-25, he served in Gaza near Rafah as a volunteer surgeon treating Palestinians wounded by Israeli military operations. Indeed, Hamawy was trapped there for a time. While this was ostensibly a mercy mission, treating injured civilians, rumors circulated that the doctor was closer to Palestinian terrorist groups than it was polite to discuss.

Hamawy’s past gives cause to take such rumors seriously, and to suspect that he’s a radical who embraces violence in the name of Islam. Three decades ago, he was a close associate of Omar Abdel-Rahman, the notorious Blind Sheikh. A leading Egyptian jihadist who helped found what became Al-Qa’ida, Rahman moved to America and helped create a cadre of Islamist fifth columnists in this country, particularly around New York City. Rahman, who died in federal prison in 2017, received a life sentence for his role behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six, of which the Blind Sheikh was the spiritual motivator, at a minimum.

Curiously, his translator, including in public, was a young Adam Hamawy, then a medical student. They met in 1991. He testified for the defense at the Blind Sheikh’s high-profile trial in 1995. Hamawy does not deny being close to that top-ranking jihadist, who at the time was notorious for his frequent calls to kill “infidels,” Jews, Americans, et al. When asked about this strange association recently, Hamawy protested that he was young and the relationship was innocent, even though he heard the sheikh advocate violent jihad: “He did speak about violent things that I think most people disagree with and most people condemn, including myself,” he stated. “But it wasn’t the only thing he spoke about.”

In that interview, when pressed to recant his association with the Blind Sheikh, Hamawy renounced armed jihad, sort of (while alleging that his critics are guilty of anti-Muslim bias): “I regret not saying something. Again, I condemn the violence … But I didn’t do anything wrong, so I don’t know how I could have regret.” That’s far from saying sorry. What matters here is that it now turns out that Rahman wasn’t Hamawy’s only connection to Al-Qa’ida.

It was known that Bosnia counted among Hamawy’s medical volunteer gigs abroad: it’s listed on his campaign website. What was he doing in Bosnia? Yesterday, Jewish Insider published a bombshell report which reveals that Hamawy was in that Balkan country three decades ago working for a notorious Al-Qa’ida front.

In the summer of 1994, Hamawy, who had recently graduated from medical school, spent five weeks in Bosnia at the height of that country’s terrible civil war. He spent 10 days in the capital Sarajevo, with the rest of his visit in Zenica, in central Bosnia, which at the time was the hotbed for foreign jihadists in the country. That’s not a coincidence, since Hamawy got to Bosnia care of a fake Islamic charity ostensibly based in Chicago called Benevolence International Foundation.

Bosnian jihadists on parade in Zenica, 1995

I know a lot about BIF and related Al-Qa’ida front groups, what were collectively known as “Allah’s NGOs.” Indeed, I exposed the ugly story of how Salafi Jihadists used the Bosnian war of 1992-95 to metastasize from a regional terrorist threat to a global one in my groundbreaking 2007 book Unholy Terror. The road from the anti-Soviet jihad in 1980s Afghanistan to the 9/11 attacks ran right through Bosnia, and Hamawy was there.

BIF had its origins in the Afghan jihad, under the auspices of a wealthy Saudi radical named Adel Abdul Jalil Baterjee, but it was in Bosnia, where it sometimes operated under the flimsy cover of “Bosnian Ideal Future,” that the front became a major player in the global jihad. Per my book:

BIF’s daily operations were in the hands of Enaam Arnaout, a Syrian Islamist of Albanian lineage and a veteran of the Afghan jihad. He was also a longtime confidant of Osama bin Laden’s. The organization’s reach into Bosnia was impressive: it handpicked holy warriors to dispatch to the front, and got them there without difficulty. BIF’s contacts with top Bosnian Muslim officials were close and continuing. How much BIF spent in support of the SDA [the ruling Bosnian Muslim political party] cannot be precisely determined, as half of its expenditures for Bosnia were off the books. What is not in dispute, however, is bin Laden’s direct role in its operations. Post-9/11 investigations, including an FBI raid on BIF headquarters, revealed extensive links with Al-Qa’ida, including a list of bin Laden’s top 20 donors, the “Golden Chain,” found on a BIF computer. Among the discoveries in the BIF “treasure trove” was a letter from bin Laden authorizing Arnaout to sign documents on behalf of the Al-Qa’ida leadership. Although BIF’s Illinois office was shut down in early 2002, and Arnaout was sentenced to 11 years for his terrorism support after pleading guilty, this was years after its major work in Bosnia had been completed.

At the time Hamawy was in the Zenica area, it was crawling with foreign jihadists, many of them followers of bin Laden, including the infamous “El-Mujahid” Battalion (which BIF supported with funds and logistics). Those terrorists committed numerous crimes against Christian civilians and prisoners of war, including decapitations on film. Many notables in the global Salafi Jihad movement, including Osama bin Laden himself, spent time in Bosnia during that troubled period. What was the good doctor really doing in Bosnia in 1994 as a guest of BIF and bin Laden?

Hamawy admitted his connection to BIF and his Bosnian sojourn in a long-forgotten 1996 interview with a local New Jersey newspaper, however, when he was recently asked by Jewish Insider to comment on that visit, Hamawy declined to explain what happened. Intriguingly, JI uncovered a radio interview in which the Congressional candidate claimed that he was in Bosnia in early 1995 – which means Hamawy can’t get his facts straight, or he was in Bosnia, presumably with BIF, more than once. We need to know.

The facts are these. Democrat Congressional candidate Adam Hamawy spent at least five weeks in Bosnia during the civil war there as a guest of Benevolence International Foundation. BIF was a front for Al-Qa’ida and was directly connected to terrorism and violent extremism; it enjoyed a close operational relationship with Osama bin Laden in Bosnia and beyond. For these reasons, BIF was banned as a terrorist financier in 2002 by both the U.S. Treasury Department and the United Nations Security Council. In other words, BIF is recognized as a criminal entity across the globe.

In light of this, Hamawy must explain his relationship with BIF and Al-Qa’ida, and what he was doing for those jihadist terrorist organizations in Bosnia three decades ago. Speaking on the basis of my long experience with counterterrorism, particularly relating to Bosnia – I served as the technical director of the National Security Agency’s Balkans Division, so I know more about this issue than I can publicly state – it’s fair to pronounce Dr. Adam Hamawy a radical Islamist and probable terrorist. Democrats need to ask themselves if this is the kind of person they want representing their party in Congress.