Transcription
I could see that there was almost a satisfaction that this had happened that made me wonder what has come out from amongst us as Muslims. My name is Dr. K. Ahmed, and this is my story. I was born in London; my parents were very young, newly arrived to Britain from Pakistan. My parents are very devoted, observant Muslims, and it was very important to us that our faith would not be an imposition on the society that we were sharing. My parents felt it was essential that they teach me Islam personally, so it's my mother who had me read the Quran, always in translation. I never questioned why that was until decades later when I saw children that had been radicalized by the Taliban.
At 15, I had said to my father, "I think I want to be a journalist. I'd like to work for the BBC." My father said, "There is no one who looks like you on television. You are going to medical school." I entered the application and found myself at medical school at Nottingham. The first two years were challenging; it was not a picnic for me. But when I started to meet patients and sit in front of another person and get to listen to their story, I was hooked. I'm a pulmonologist, critical care, and sleep disorder specialist. The day I came home with my medical school diploma, it was my father's ambition that I'd be a doctor, and he said, "Now is the time for your arranged marriage." I thought to myself, "I don't like the sound of that," and I migrated to the United States.
Within a year, I remember the first time I came to New York. It was this colossal force, and it had this incredible feeling of anything is possible. It somehow felt much more vast and much more full of opportunity and possibility. There was something bigger and better, and I was just captivated. Then, when I had to leave the United States at the end of my visa, I was heartbroken. By chance, a childhood friend was visiting me that weekend; he lived in Dubai, and he said, "They have a lot of doctors in the Middle East. Did you ever think about going to the Middle East?" I found a job and was hired to work in Saudi Arabia. Three weeks later, I was on a plane.
As soon as I got off the plane in 1999, I saw the line separating into men and women. I felt exposed because my hair was not covered. When I was met by the hospital officials who'd come to pick me up, the windows were blacked out so that nobody could see women passengers in the back. It was an incredible shock. I didn't have autonomy; I had to hand over my passport, which was now in the keeping of the officials in the hospital. If I had to go out, then I would need a driver because I was not allowed to drive, and I would have to wear an abaya, a full-length cloak covering all my body, and a headscarf. That was actually the first place that I really became aware of my gender. I'd always functioned in the West just like a male doctor; suddenly, everything relating to me was made to be about gender.
September 11th was a real inflection point. I watched one tower collapse, and I watched the second plane go through. It was so extraordinarily devastating. I had friends and family in New York City. I was speaking to other expatriates from New Zealand, South Africa, and America; everybody was very distraught. I spoke to some Saudis and noticed that they were not distraught. Some of the nurses asked me to come and talk to them late one evening, so we went into an empty room, and they wanted to tell me what had happened on 9/11, which was that there had been some Saudi female physicians who had ordered cakes in celebration of the towers collapsing. I was surrounded by multiply board-certified physicians and highly educated people, and I could see that there was almost a satisfaction that this had happened. That made me wonder what has come out from amongst us as Muslims, and that began my odyssey, which continues even today.
But I must say, thankfully, Saudi Arabia is not the same country it was back then. After seeing 9/11, I came back to New York. Ground Zero was still on fire; you could smell it. I made a decision to write a book called "In the Land of Invisible Women" about being a Muslim woman in Saudi Arabia, and I became sort of an amateur political scientist. I realized very early on that the number one recipient of Islamist jihadist terror has been Israel. So I began reading about Israel's experience with Hamas, and finally, I thought, "Look, I've been reading and writing; I better go and visit. It's just an astonishing place."
I went in and saw patients, and on the door of every patient's room was a mouza, and inside was an Israeli Muslim nurse and an Israeli Jewish doctor, or vice versa. I remember one moment I was in an elevator, and it was like probably all of the great religions were in that one elevator. I saw the most amazing diversity. The amount of times I've been to Israel, I've pretty much seen all aspects over the years, and it's a place that I recommend everybody should go and visit. Some of the most amazing discoveries I made were when I said, "Please, can I see inside the Hamas infrastructure? Can I go inside a newly discovered tunnel?" What was amazing to me was the level of construction, ventilation, and electricity. I thought, "I am inside the belly of the ideology."
That first became apparent to me as I was in Saudi Arabia watching my TV when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th. Within 48 hours, or perhaps even sooner, people were denying that it was happening. I think it was the intense denial and the intense minimization of this event that made me feel compelled to say, "I'm going to go and see," and I'm going to go not because I'm Muslim and not because I condemn radical Islam, but because I'm a human being. Precisely because I'm not Israeli and because I'm not Jewish, it's important to go and acknowledge that.
So I felt it was a big responsibility. When I arrived, I realized the whole plane was full of people going to enlist from New York, and next to me was a very religious Jewish woman and her newborn. I remember all through the flight thinking about this woman and her newborn and thinking about what had happened and what I was about to behold. I personally examined the bodies of the dead with forensics. They showed no mercy; they spared nobody—not woman, not child, not pregnant mother. I saw bodies that were multiply violated, meaning people had been executed in many ways; their bodies had been desecrated after their murder. I saw remains that were absolutely unintelligible without high-resolution CT scans. I talked to morgue workers who were carrying body bags, trying not to have the charcoal in their hands crumble.
This is who is being supported if they are not being rejected. You are either with Hamas, or you are not with Hamas; there's no middle ground here. They do the same indiscriminate killing of their own civilians in pursuit of their genocidal hatred for Israel. The Muslim world doesn't understand what it is empowering. There have been protests in Hamburg, Germany, where Islamists in Germany have been agitating and demonstrating for a Sharia state inside Germany, and that is extremely dangerous for Muslims. It's extremely dangerous for anybody that lives in those societies.
For me, the United States has always been a beacon—a place of hope, light, possibility, and opportunity. I can confirm that America has been everything and more. It took me almost 25 years to become an American; it was worth every minute. To connect the dots further in New York, it's my privilege to look after, for decades, people that survived 9/11—people that went to clean up Ground Zero that now still have illnesses. So I have a panoptical view of what this ideology has done, and Israel has faced almost every aspect of it. It's impossible to allow Hamas to exist. If we leave even a remnant, it is going to return with greater ferocity.
We've now exposed the sympathies for Islamist ideology, and perhaps the best antidote is to return to our fundamental values in the United States. This is a place that safeguards freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of religion for all people in America, and it's about time we got back to that. Thank you for watching this video. To keep these videos free at PragerU, please consider making a tax-deductible donation.