Lamyaa Hashim, (who often goes by the name Um Ahmad) is a well known Islamic poet. Her poetry, including one poem which seems to be about a suicide bomber (‘My Beloved Left for Palestine’), can be seen on such radical websites as palestine4ever.net.  The site belongs to the medical director for the Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund, Rosemary Davis (Shadya Hantouli), and features a picture gallery of past suicide bombers. Hashim gave permission to put her poetry on the site.

More of Hashim’s poetry appears on her personal website, ‘Struggle in Palestine,’ which contains on its homepage a picture of someone burning an effigy that says “WAR IS HELL, BUSH IS SATAN.”  In addition, there is a link on Hashim’s website to an organization associated with the terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and a link to a site praising Abdullah Azzam, the founder of the organization that became Al Qaeda.

Hashim once headed a now-defunct Deerfield Beach, Florida charity called the Health Resource Center for Palestine. Ibrahim Dremali’s brother, Ishaq, was the Gaza operations coordinator for the charity. Ibrahim Dremali is the imam of the Islamic Center of Boca Raton who, in October 2000, spoke at a rally where Israeli flags were burned and slogans such as “With jihad we’ll claim our land, Zionist blood will wet the sand” were shouted. Dremali encouraged the crowd “not to be sad for those who were martyred, and to not be afraid to die for what [they] believe in” – obvious allusions to suicide bombers.

This profile was adapted from the article “Boca Raton, City of Terror,” written by Joe Kaufman and published by FrontPageMagazine.com on May 22, 2003.