Part 1 of TED Radio Hour episode Transformation.
About Zak Ebrahim's TED Talk
Zak Ebrahim is the son of terrorist El-Sayyid Nosair, one of the masterminds of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He tells the story of being raised to hate and how he chose a very different path.
About Zak Ebrahim
Zak Ebrahim was 7 years old when his father, El-Sayyid Nosair, killed the leader of the Jewish Defense League. While in prison, Nosair helped plan the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
I wasn't prepared for the real world. I'd been raised to judge people based on arbitrary measurements like a person's race or religion.
After his father's incarceration, Ebrahim's family moved over 20 times, haunted by and persecuted for his father's crimes. The older he got, the more he grasped the horror of his father's acts. The more he understood, the more he resolved to dedicate his life to promoting peace.
His recently launched TED Book, The Terrorist's Son: A Story of Choice, traces his remarkable journey to escape his father's legacy, and is a story of a boy inculcated in dogma and hate — a boy presumed to follow in his father's footsteps — and the man who chose a different path.
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