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The following analysis was authored by journalist and CAM editorial advisor Lee Smith:
After winning the Democratic primary to represent New Jersey’s 12th congressional district on Tuesday night, Egyptian-born Adam Hamawy offered a glimpse of the worldview that’s shaped his meteoric political rise heading into the November midterm elections.
“Takbir,” the 56-year-old plastic surgeon enthusiastically shouted to a roomful of supporters, the cue for them to chant back “Allahu Akbar.” And three times they joined him in reciting the Arabic phrase for “God is great.”
Adam Hamawy celebrated his Democratic primary victory by shouting the takbir, “Allahu Akbar,” three times.
For centuries, “Allahu Akbar” was the cry of Muslim armies as they raided, conquered, and expanded Islamic rule. It echoed across battlefields from the Middle East to North…
— Brother Rachid الأخ رشيد (@BrotherRasheed) June 3, 2026
It’s true that “Allahu Akbar” is part of traditional Muslim prayers, but it’s hardly news that Islamist terrorists, from the Middle East to Europe and Africa to the United States, have adopted it as a battle cry accompanying campaigns of wanton violence and bloodshed. Given Hamawy’s links to institutions and individuals involved in terror activities, it’s noteworthy he didn’t seek to quell any concerns about the kind of politics he intends to promote on Capitol Hill.
Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly two-to-one in New Jersey’s 12th district, meaning Hamawy is almost certain to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives come November. There he’ll join a growing cohort of pro-Islamist House members, including Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. The members of the so-called “Squad” routinely vote against military aid and supplemental funding bills for Israel and Hamawy vows to add his vote to theirs by calling for a full arms embargo on Israel.
He calls Israel’s campaign in Gaza a “genocide” and opposes funding for the Iron Dome missile defense system that has saved so many Israeli lives over the past decade and a half.
“What it is doing is insulating Israel from having to make decisions to make peace,” Hamawy has said, “and it really isolates them from having to deal with the consequences.” A pro-Palestinian political action committee called American Priorities spent more than $1.5 million on campaign ads for his primary contest and plans to spend another $2 million for the congressional race.
Like other progressives, Hamawy wants to abolish immigration and customs enforcement. In a video interview with far-left anti-Israel podcaster Hasan Piker, Hamawy compared U.S. activist groups that prevent federal agents from detaining illegal aliens to Europeans who hid Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust. “If communities are organizing to help their neighbors, this is what happened in Nazi Germany, right?” Hamawy said. “People were organizing to help the Jewish community be able to hide and to protect them.”
It’s a sad index of the transformation of the American political landscape since the October 7th massacre that taking the pro-Palestinian terror position has become a purity test on the left. And Hamawy, a man with no political experience, became an ascending Democratic Party star because he made good on his convictions. The former U.S. Army surgeon went to Gaza in 2024 to volunteer at the European Hospital in Khan Younis. He called it “a completely benign civilian hospital with no tunnels underneath it,” and yet months later Israeli troops located and killed Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar, brother of October 7th mastermind Yahya Sinwar, in a tunnel underneath the hospital.
Hamawy has frequently rubbed elbows with terrorists. In the mid-1990s, he volunteered for an Al Qaeda-linked group in Bosnia called “Benevolence International,” which was reportedly used as a front to “establish a base for operations in Europe against Al Qaeda’s true enemy, the United States.”
Hamawy also attended a New Jersey mosque where he befriended Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, the former head of Gamaa Islamiya, the notorious Egyptian terrorist group that slaughtered tourists visiting Egypt and, most famously, assassinated Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat in 1981 for signing the Camp David peace accords with Israel. When Abdul Rahman was tried in 1995 for his role in a major plot to bomb several New York City landmarks, his defense team called Hamawy as a witness. According to recent media reports, Hamawy lied when he told the jury that he’d never heard Abdel Rahman speak about jihad against America.
“I think the voters of New Jersey have a right to know why Dr. Hamawy felt so strongly in defending a violent jihadist leader … that he repeatedly lied under oath in the 1995 terrorist trial,” terrorism expert Steven Emerson told the press.
But the issue is that New Jersey voters know very well that the Democratic candidate for New Jersey’s 12th congressional district supports terrorists who killed Americans among the 1,200 murdered on October 7th. He won his primary on Tuesday because he’s not hiding it.
