Mom Of Anwar al-Sadat's Killer "Very Proud" Of What Her Son Did

Only in the Arab world are mothers 'proud' of their killer offspring.

The 85-year-old mother of Egyptian Khaled al-Islambouli, the army officer who assassinated President Anwar al-Sadat on October 6, 1981, was recently interviewed by Iran's Fars news agency, and this is what she said of her son:

“I am very proud that my son killed Anwar al-Sadat. The government called him a terrorist, a criminal, and a murderer, but they didn’t say that was he was defending Islam. They didn’t say anything about the oppressed people in Palestine, about Camp David, or how Sadat sold out the country to the Jews and violated the honor of the Islamic nation."

If you remember, Sadat was murdered on the eighth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War with Israel. What prompted the assassination was the fact that Sadat made peace with Israel (through the Camp David Accord in 1979) and Islambouli, a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, wanted none of it. So, during the October 6 ceremony,

 gunmen ran from one of the parade vehicles with Islambouli leading an orchestrated hit, leaping from military vehicles to bombard the presidential stand with bullets. Sadat was pronounced dead two hours later and 20 others, including four American diplomats, were injured.

Islambouli and others involved in the assassination plot were executed April 15, 1982.  Naturally, they were lauded as martyrs and inspired future jihadist movements. In fact, he seemed to inspire his murderous brother, Mohamed Showqi, who in 1995 plotted to assassinate Hosni Mubarak and was sentenced to death in absentia.

And the Iranian government certainly was proud of Islambouli, since they had hatred of the Jews and Israel in common.  In fact, they were so proud, in 1981 they named a street after him in Tehran, and when he was executed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called him a martyr. And Qadriya loves Iran, after all Iran helped her get back to Egypt (from Afghanistan), and they paid for her 15-day, all-inclusive trip to Iran. Apparently, her son loved Iran too- he dreamed of an Islamic revolution taking over the Arab world. With the rise of the Islamists as a result of the Arab Spring, his dream just might be coming true.