So, it’s out in public now that the co-pilot who attacked Captain Smit Machchhar with an emergency crash axe on flydubai flight FZ1073 is Hamam al-Hammami, an Omani national. On 1 October, it was known to me that Al-Hammami was being described as a “religious extremist” who “refused to shake hands with women.” Speaking to Channel 16, one of his colleagues, a fellow pilot, said: “He [Al-Hammami] prayed excessively throughout the day and refused to shake hands with women.”

Now, you’ll see a flood of pieces — Al Jazeera asking who the “mystery co-pilot” is, the BBC telling you Australia is “investigating flydubai co-pilot’s links to country.” They’ll even tell you he held “extremist views.” What you won’t get from them, or from the Indian media, is what those views actually say — because explaining that would mean quoting the verses. And quoting the verses earns you a label: “Islamophobe.”

However, my brother says: “In a debate, accept whatever label the other side throws at you and say: I’m everything that you call me. Just answer now if I’m wrong or right on facts.”

Following his footsteps, here is the theology that makes an Al-Hammami — one that sees the Jews on that plane, and the Hindu captain at its controls, as Kafirs:

Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture—[fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.

– Quran 9:29

The verse names the People of the Book. But in an Islamist’s reading, it doesn’t stop there — and a Hindu captain at the controls is no exception. The hate exists for real — and for all. Anyone believing otherwise wants to live as an ostrich. Kudos to them. I, at least, am not under any delusion.

Then there are these:

And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you…

– Quran 2:191

And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them…

– Quran 9:5 – often called the “Sword Verse”

Indeed, Jews are not polytheists. But 9:5 helps develop that zeal for killing each and every infidel — without any discrimination — in an Islamist’s mind.

Then comes:

O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another…

– Quran 5:51

This holy verse ensures that an Islamist never considers Jews and Christians, both referred to as “People of the Book,” for peaceful coexistence, diplomatic relations, alliances, or even friendship; if he does, this verse helps undo that.

And lastly come the beautiful words of the almighty Allah that act as weapons to dehumanise Jewish people and place them on a pedestal of the inherently cursed:

…and We said to them, ‘Be apes, despised.’

– Quran 2:65

…those whom Allah has cursed and with whom He became angry and made of them apes and pigs…

– Quran 5:60

For those folks dying to write, “How can you say it was Islam that inspired Al-Hammami to do whatever jihadist thing he did?” — pals, your Al-Hammami was reportedly flagged and grounded by Oman Air in 2024 over concerns he had adopted “radical ideological views.” And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Al-Hammami had undergone “Islamist radical indoctrination.”

And how do you know these are the right verses? Here are the names, and the picture will become clear. First, Sayyid Qutb, intellectual godfather of modern jihadism, who in his commentary In the Shade of the Quran used 9:29 and 5:51 to argue that these verses impose a permanent theological duty to fight non-Muslims and to refrain from alliances with the Jews.

Second, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the prominent Sunni cleric and spiritual guide to the Muslim Brotherhood, who called violent resistance against Israel an obligatory religious duty (jihad) for all Muslims, and endorsed suicide bombings against Israelis. Third, Abdullah Azzam, the Palestinian Sunni scholar who co-founded Maktab al-Khidamat with Osama bin Laden — the forerunner of Al-Qaeda. This was the chap who turned jihad from a collective duty into an individual one, binding on every Muslim wherever Muslim land was occupied. The jihadist reading he helped spread treats 9:5 and 9:29 as absolute commands that override every verse of the Quran teaching reconciliation. This list is endless. My patience isn’t. Shalom.