Tawfik Hamid

Tawfik Hamid (; born 1961) is an Egyptian-American Muslim reformer and medical doctor. A self-described former member of the militant group al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya, he says that he started to preach in mosques to promote his message and, as a result, became a target of Islamic militants, who threatened his life. He has been a Senior Fellow and Chair for the Study of Islamic Radicalism at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.

Background Hamid was born in Egypt in a secular Muslim family, but later joined al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya under Ayman al-Zawahiri, later leader of al-Qaeda.

He fled Egypt, first to Saudi Arabia and then to the United States. He was a speaker at The Intelligence Summit in 2007.

Views on Islam

Hamid rejects the view that Muslim fundamentalists are driven by poverty, saying that most he knew were middle-class university students like himself. He says that Muslim fundamentalists believe that Saudi Arabia's petroleum-based wealth is a divine gift and that Saudi influence is sanctioned by Allah. Thus, the Salafist extreme brand of Sunni Islam that spread from the Saudi Arabia to the rest of the Islamic world is regarded not merely as one interpretation of the religion but as the only genuine interpretation. The expansion of violent and regressive Islam, he continues, began in the late 1970s and can be traced precisely to the growing financial clout of Saudi Arabia.

He vocally opposed the construction of the Park51 mosque and Islamic center at Ground Zero. and he has supported proposals for the United States to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. He is a Muslim supporter of Israel. Due to Hamid's active support for Frank Gaffney, Tom Griffin of openDemocracy has supported Hope not Hate's designation of Hamid as a counter-jihad activist.