Tawfik Hamid

In a 2009 Wall Street Journal article, Hamid said that Islam should prove its peacefulness and called Islamic scholars and clerics "to produce a Shariah book that will be accepted in the Islamic world and that teaches that Jews are not pigs and monkeys, that declaring war to spread Islam is unacceptable, and that killing apostates is a crime."

In 2007, Hamid served as a keynote speaker for The Intelligence Summit and now sits on their advisory board.

Hamid is the author of "Inside Jihad." Originally self-published in 2007, the book was republished by Mountain Lake Press in 2015 in an updated and expanded edition, Inside Jihad: How Radical Islam Works, Why It Should Terrify Us, How to Defeat It. He has written opinion pieces for The Wall Street Journal, including Islam Needs To Prove It's A Religion Of Peace, How to End Islamophobia and The Trouble with Islam. He also writes the "Inside Islam" column for Newsmax. Hamid participated in a symposium published by National Review Online, where he expressed his view on the Sudanese teddy bear blasphemy case.

In a 2006 radio show (the Orla Barry Show, part of Newstalk), he was quoted as saying: "There are different degrees of evil. Jemaah Islamiya represents the active evil or active terrorists let us call them who are ready to commit violent acts and all such atrocities. But the majority of Muslim are all passive terrorists. They believe in this evil. They support it either by money or emotionally they are not against it...The vast majority of Muslims were against any peaceful understanding. And they prefer this violent traditional teaching of Islam."

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.

Tawfik Hamid (Arabic: توفيق حامد ‎; born 1961) is an author from Egypt. A self-described former member of the militant al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, Hamid says that he advocates a peaceful understanding of Islam that is compatible with universal human rights and intellectual freedom. 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. Hamid then migrated to the United States where he has lectured at UCLA, Stanford University, University of Miami and Georgetown University against Islamic fundamentalism. He currently serves on the Advisory Council of The Intelligence Summit, an annual conference on security. Hamid has also appeared on television programs, including Fox's Glenn Beck Show, Fox News Channel, and the BBC's Religion and Ethics.