March 5, 2024 • 68 mins
Veteran Richard McKinney hated Muslims and after returning from Iraq, he couldn't stand seeing "the enemy" in his community of Muncie, Indiana. He visited their mosque to justify his planned bombing of it, but their love for him completely transformed his heart. Ultimately, Richard converted to Islam and even served as the mosque’s President.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, everybody, it's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks.
And we continue now with part two of our conversation
with mac McKinney, right after these brief messages from our
generals sponsors. So a rock is where you got blowed up?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah, we went in. So I was doing interrogations and
I begged, I begged to go on a mission, go
outside the wire. Please let me go.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Oh, because you're stuck behind doing interrogations. If you want
to be out in the field, I want to be
on the field.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
It's like, you know, this is great, man, but this
is like, this is like punching a heavy bag. It's
not gonna hit your bag, right, and it gets boring. Uh,
And they finally let me go. They gave me a team.
We worked up. We had intel there was going to
(01:09):
be a an al Qaida lieutenant at such and such building.
We're gonna hood over the head bring them in, right, Yeah,
so it's a big operation.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Just bring them in mean alive or dead? Or did
you want them alive? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
You want them alive?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah. Yeah. So we got to the building. I mean,
and this is a bigger this is this isn't just
like five guys. This is like, you know, you have
a security team that actually cordon's off like a two
block radius. Then you have an extraction team which is
also your delivery team, but your distraction team which is
waiting on the street so you can you know, high
(01:48):
tail it out, and then the assault team, which was
us when we went into the building. We went into
the building. Man, there was nobody there. They had a
bunch of stuff that was laught. All we got we
well it doesn't at her because we never brought it back,
but there was a there was a lot of intel there.
(02:08):
I went back up on the second floor as my
team was gathering all the information on the front or
on the first floor, and because we had this big
hole blown that was blown through the wall that looked
out onto the street. And it's so easy for me
to talk about this because I have no memory of
what happened after this To this day, I don't remember.
(02:32):
I like to joke about it because of that, because
I don't have any memory of it.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
No physical pain, No physical pain, well that moment's pain.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
No, No, it was like I don't even I can't
even recall hearing a boom. I just remember looking out
onto the street, and being up higher, I can look
around and make sure everything. You know, we're not going
to walk out into something, right, because we're safe in
this building. We leave, we're not safe anymore. So I
want to make sure that me and my team are
good to go. That's the last thing I remember. I
(03:05):
woke up several days later with a chaplain sitting next
to my bed. I come to and I was like,
what the hell you know I'm looking at I know
him in a hospital, right, And then I got kind
of mad because I'm like, I didn't die right by
(03:26):
my whole destiny about coming back in the flag dray Coffin.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
I just I'm like, oh crap, man, suping legs are wondering.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
I did that once before in Desert's form. I got
a piece of strapping on my head up here, but
uh yeah, I did that once before.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
But but like am I am? I all intact?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
That didn't hit me at first. I'm I'm just kind
of like, oh man, And and I hear a noise
because the chaplain jumped up, and I look over and
I you know, I see him, and I see his uniform.
He's got crossed right here on his chest and it's
so great. That's wonderful. Uh And and he looks at me,
says certain, and he says, I got to tell you something.
You are a one lucky individual. He says, you died.
(04:11):
I said what they said. Yeah, when they brought you in,
they were treating you and you flatlined and the doctor
brought you back. It's like I'm trying to think, and
I'm like, nope, I got no stories of bright lights
or anything. So I was, as far as I know,
I was just asleep. And he says, he says, you
(04:33):
have somebody watching over you.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Definitely do.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
And I says, sir, I gotta tell you no disrespect
to your position in life. But he don't want me.
I'm like highlander up in here. I can't die. I've tried,
and that the Chaplain's just looking at me like, oh
my gosh.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Man.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
And then people started coming in telling me that they're
you know, I'm being processed for medical retirement. I already
had over twenty years.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
What happened to you? What was wrong with your body?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Oh? Just I mean just scarring. Uh. I got some
shrapnel scars on my on my left half and uh,
my back just was obliterated. My shoulder is this dislocated?
It never really healed? Right?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
So what happened? Was there a bomb in there?
Speaker 2 (05:25):
I'm sorry?
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah? Yeah, no, I mean.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
There was an id underneath the building. Uh, and the
dead and so it's almost like we were set up
and it.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Was someone else step on it. Oh no, they remotely
activated it from a phone. Once you got to a phone.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah, yeah, probably a phone.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
So they were watching you somewhere. Yeah yeah, did you
fly off the second floor.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Well, so this this youngster came in. He came in
to see a friend in the hospital there. It was
like a mass hospital, right, He come in to see
a friend. He saw me, and he's like, Sorge. He said,
my god, man, he says, are you okay? I says,
I don't know. Man, they're kicking me out, and he says, brother.
(06:10):
He says, you don't even know. He says, man, the
only thing missing from you was a cape because you
flew straight across the street. That's what he told me.
Like I said, I like to make a joke of
it because it's I have no memory of it, and
I'm very thankful. I'm very thankful I don't because I
probably have nervous breakdown, but I have no memory of it,
(06:31):
but it messed me up for a while. And they
come in and they start telling me about the process
seeing me for medical retirement, and I was like, we're
not doing this. I'm going back to Rack.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
And he looked at me and they were.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Like it was like they were military, but they were
like the hospital social workers, right, And it says, hard
and why do you want to go back to Rack?
I looked dead in the eyes. So I'm not done
killing Muslims yet. If I wasn't getting out before I
said that, I was definitely getting out when I after
(07:06):
I said that, because they just like looked at me
and they're like oh, and then he walked out. Yeah.
Next thing you know, I got a guy sitting across
from me with his legs cross going. So how does
that make you feel?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
You know what I mean? Sitting Yeah. Yeah. So now
you're out and your home and you're back in Monthly, which.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Was never really my home originally.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Anyway, Okay, but you're in months yeah, Well, I because
it was my home record, it was a mailing address
for a lot of years.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
I had joined the Army from there when I was
trying to work. You know, I had no job skills.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
President, there's really not much of a job in the
United States for killing Muslims. Well, we the teams, we
would always around like what you were good at? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Yeah, we tell people, or we used to talk to
my self as a man, I said, I don't know
what I'm gonna do when we get out. I said,
there's only three things I could really do anything. I'd
be a hit man for the mob, a pimp, or
a drug dealer. I don't really have any other skills.
And I was like, that's so true, because I had
no education. I had a GED. I got a ged
(08:23):
was Marie or in the Marine Corps. They made me
because I could have cared less. And I have no
job skills. So what am I doing. I'm twenty five
years old working as a labor work for a commercial
roofing company. Hard work, right as a labor And I
was on that roof and I'm like shoveling stuff over
(08:45):
the side into the big, big trash bend they have,
and I'm like listening to the foreman talk down to me,
and I'm like, dude, you don't even know me. Because
like two years before that. I mean, I was a
bodyguard for President Bush when he came to small Year.
He lost the election to Clinton, and he twenty five
(09:09):
Marines got picked to be his basically bodyguards of The
official title is bullet catcher as all was, you know,
because he's in a war zone, right but still still
and you're gonna talk down to me, man, redneck piece
of tracks.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
That's what I thought.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I walked right off the job site into the Army recruiter's.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Office and that's when you join the army.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And say, hey, man, when's the bustle league? Dude? Come
out of here? And I went back when my duty.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
But now you're forty five ish and inn Muncie. You
spent twenty five years developing a very unique skill set
that doesn't translate back to the States. No, what are
you doing so nothing? But you're hating Muslims.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
But I'm hating Muslims. And that's the first time I noticed.
I mean, they had always been there, but I've never
noticed them before. And here they are everywhere, at the Walmart,
at the Walmart, oh, at Applebee's. My wife at the
at the at the time, she would get so nervous
(10:18):
going to going shopping.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Your wife then's name was Dana.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Tell us about Emily, Oh man, I was introduced to
Emily when she was four years old.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
This is Dana's data's daughter. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Her dad's a foreign national. He's from Mexico, and uh,
he got in a lot of trouble here. So he
was deported with basically a sticker on his butt saying
do not return. Right, So she didn't have a dad,
and me and her just became like best buddies.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
To hear her talk about you is phenomenal. There's a
short third minute documentary about what we're about to discuss
and your life. We've caught it up to that point.
The name of the documentary is Stranger at the Gates, right,
Stranger at the Gate, and it's an Academy Award nominee.
When I watched it and I listened to Emily speak
(11:18):
about you, she revered you. You were her dad. Oh
and she was just a pup at this time, right
four or five, six, seven years old, and you're her.
You take her riding, you take her driving, where you
are she is, and you were you were her father. Yeah,
(11:41):
and you cherish this girl, oh my gosh, more than
anything and given your unique skill set. Anybody hears a
harm harms a hair on her head. I imagine you
could have done more than waterboard.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Gladly go back to jail. I mean, I've been to
jail before, gladly returned, gladly returned for an extended stay.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Have no problem with that. And at the same time,
you're carrying this hate for Muslims and frankly, this innate
disgust that your destiny was stolen from you because now
you're alive, walking around the United States and you didn't
go out the way you thought you were.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I had no purpose except for being this little girl's dad.
Except for being a little girl's dad.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
So I had come up with a point. I found
out that these Muslims, there's a lot of them here.
Oh God, no, huh huh. So I had went and
found out where their building was at that time. It
was actually in a house that was in a neighborhood
(13:03):
that was right off Ball State University. Is the is
the university there in Muncie. It was right off campus,
right and I looked at it, and this is their mosque.
I guess I don't know what you call it. Well yeah, yeah, mosque.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
But this was their house of worship.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yeah, this was their house of where it was basically
just a house in a neighborhood, right, And I looked
around and I was like, I can't do nothing here, man,
this is not a a agreeable option because of all
of the Americans around here.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
And that's the way I looked at it. Did you
feel like they were a threat? Oh? Absolutely, you felt
like the Muslims that were at Walmart, at Applebee's and
hanging out this house at their place of worship and
we're going to school with your daughter, yeah, or a
risk mm hmm. You literally thought they were looking just
(14:03):
for ways to covertly murder you and your family and
Americans absolutely and destroy your country absolutely, which is the
only thing that mattered to you in the world was
your country and your daughter. Yep. And you look back
on it now and that is the most perturbed thinking
on the face of the planet. But that is where
you were. Yeah. Yeah, so you come up with a plan.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I had, you know, because all my experiences, I knew
how to make an ID. It's really very simple, you know,
a bomb. Yeah, and uh, I don't I don't speak
of it. More than that usually because the FBI had
me sign paperwork that I would not disclose what was
involved in the bomb.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
We're not going to talk about how to make it.
I don't think there's any I don't think that part
of the story does anybody any good. But let's just
say so, after twenty five years, you could make a bomb.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, yeah, So, And I had started putting together over
two years with the intent, with the intent that detonated
somewhere with these Muslims. I couldn't do it here because
of this house. It's in a neighborhood. Too many Americans around, right,
(15:18):
so the risk to others was just too substantial.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
I wasn't going to do that.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Then they moved and they got They took over an
office building that was kind of out in the middle
of nowhere, off the beaten path.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Perfect became a target.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
I got it now. So when I actually went into
the mosque that one day, the bomb was done. I
just needed time, a time and date, which I'd already
decided was going to be during Ramadan, which is the
holy month. Because it's kind of like Catholics and Christmas Mass, right,
(15:57):
everybody's there.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
So there were there was the biggest opportunity for the
greatest about a carnage and damage on that day.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Oh, it was going to be a Friday afternoon during
the month of Ramadan, because I knew they would all
be there and you were going to plant this thing
at their place and blow them up. I already had
a place for it everything. It was just a matter
of just waiting.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
You realize that that would make you no different than
the men who flew the planes into the World Trade Zone.
I know that now, But you didn't see yourself as
a terrorist. You saw yourself as a patriot. Absolutely absolutely.
(16:40):
Do you find it at all ironic that one of
your memories of your grandfather was wearing you out for
hanging out with a quote and I'm quoting what your
grandfather said, colored kid. And your greatest visceral reaction as
an adult was when a Muslim person side across from
(17:00):
your daughter. Do you find it interesting that from a
very young age, that idea was somewhere in the deepest
rests of your brain, probably baked into you.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
I didn't even I didn't even till I had already changed.
Didn't even see the irony in it all, because it
literally is the same thing literally is the same thing
of what I felt as a little kid to what
my daughter was feeling right now.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
And how do you how do you process that?
Speaker 2 (17:39):
When I finally figured that out, I didn't even know.
I was kind of like I was ashamed. Well, I mean,
you know, I spend a lot of time in the
shame arena anyway, just dealing with my past. But it
was there was just so much shame.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
It was like, man, you.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Are the dumbest individual. Walk upright, man, I mean, how
could you not see this?
Speaker 1 (18:04):
So you walk into this newly opened house of worship
for Muslims in Muncie, Indiana, and you are on part
recon mission because if you're looking around, you're also seeing
where the softest place is for this bomb to blow
up and everything else I'm assuming.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Well, I mean I had already had a spot picked
out that was on the opposite side of the building
because there were buildings over here, and I knew that
they would be hit by some of the debris, but
I was trying to make it as less as possible,
so that would have been an acceptable collateral damage. In
military planning, there was an acceptable and an unacceptable collateral
(18:46):
damage that would have been acceptable.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
So I read that when you were going off on
the Muslim community, your daughter looked at you like you
were nuts, and she couldn't understand why you were so
angry and had so much hatred toward Buslims, no differently
than you didn't understand your grandfather exactly. And so part
(19:13):
of the idea of showing up at this mosque was
to find out the truth about these people so that
she would understand why you blew them up.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
One day, I was looking for tangible proof I knew
the way I felt was the right way.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
You knew they were murderers, Oh I knew, and you
know they were head choppers, and you knew they were
here to destroy America. That's all you knew that you
wanted to prove to her.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
I needed something to show her. I needed, you know.
So I went there, introduced myself as somebody just wanted
to learn a little bit more about Islam, right, even
though I come from the mindset that even today a
lot of people say I learned all I needed to
learn about Islam on nine to eleven. But that's the way.
I just wanted that proof because I knew I was
(19:58):
going to get caught. I'm not get away with this.
Are you serious? You know? I mean you no, I didn't.
I didn't because I saw it as that patriot, patriot,
another chance to die for my country. I wasn't going
to get a flag, Dray Coffin. I would not even
get a military funeral because of what I did. And
(20:22):
none of that mattered. I actually believe that years down
the road they were going to build statues to me.
I actually believe that in my own mind.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
You know. So you go in this place to.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
So I went in, yeah, and I mean and I
was met with kindness. And I remember walking in and uh,
you know this one guy he actually played NBA. He
was African American and he was sitting on a bench
and he got got up in the shoe room because
you take your shoes off before you go in there.
And it took him like three minutes to stand up,
(20:58):
that's how tall he was. African American gentleman. He recently
passed and it was a very sad moment for the community.
But he played NBA basketball in the seventies. He dealt
with a lot of racism himself, right because of that.
But you know, he looked at me, and he smiled,
and he says, can I help you? Because he knew
I was like, why am I here? You know?
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah, I can only imagine this twenty five years of
being basically a rugged jar head walking into a place
that he hates and he despises everybody in it. You
couldn't have been walking in with a big, old charismatic
smile on your face. It was rough. It was rough.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
In the film, people say that they could tell something
was wrong, right, I'm not an actor. I tried, but
it was hard to cover up a lot of things, right.
I tried to smile. I tried to I shook hands,
you know.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
But it was rough.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And then I got introduced to the Southern African American
gentleman closer my own age. He's a little bit younger
than me, and he's the one who actually handed me
a koran. I know in the film it says Bbe
handed me a koran, but it was actually him. He says,
He says, hey, he says, you want to learn about Islam.
I want you to take his home and I want
you to read it. Come back and find me when
(22:20):
you got questions. I tell Muslims out to day, I said,
if you ever anybody comes up to you and they
want to learn it, they want to know about Islam,
hand him a Koran and tell them to come back
and find you when they got questions, right, because that's
the best advice in the world. And I was overjoyed
at this point because now you got the doctor went
(22:40):
to the bookstore and got a Koran. I never even
thought of that, never even thought of that. I'm like,
I got the Holy Grail to evil.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
They just handed it to it.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
And on top of that, they're going to explain it
to me.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
It was like, that is hilarious. I'm like, I'm like,
this is oh.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
I couldn't even imagine me and cruse of.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
My daughter that blowing these folks up and terrorize them
and murdering them is the right thing to do.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
So I jumped into it, man, I jumped into I
I I that was ended up becoming my passion. I'm
going to read this book and I'm gonna I'm gonna
highlight underline all kinds of stuff. Man, you thought I
was in a Bible study or something, right, And I'm
just I'm going out. I'm going back to the mosque.
It wasn't Ramadon. Yet I was there more often than
some of the Muslims were, and I'm going back and
(23:33):
hey man, what about this. This don't sound too cool.
And then they explain it to me and it's like, well,
I was contextualizing a lot, and they would explain, Okay,
here's what happened before, and here's what happened after, and
that's the reason this is right. Oh, that's not a
lot different than the old Tustaman. Okay, I got you,
I got you, okay, h And I go read some
(23:54):
more and I come back and you know, and then finally,
you know, with the other stuff that I had going
on on my own subconscious or whatever, I know, it's
a change was happening. And one of the biggest things
on the surface was the fact that through reading this
book and spending time with these people, you know, it's
(24:16):
the same thing with all religions, Right, we have a
text and we try to live our life as close
to that text as we can. Right, it's impossible to
be one hundred percent because we're human and we're.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Not making the first twenty five years text for you
was probably the Marine Handbook.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Absolutely, Absolutely, he's to be able to recite stuff by heart,
not a problem. So I'm reading this and you know, yeah,
there's some things in there that are questionable, and it's like, okay,
well they got explained to me. And then I keep reading.
It's like, there's not really any hate in this book,
and there's not it's not here, you know, and I'm thinking, okay, well,
(24:54):
what about these people over here, the people in my community, right,
we're acting close to what it says in this so
they're actually being what would be quote unquote good Muslims. Right,
all of my understanding of what Islam was and how
Muslims act were the ones that were shooting at me.
(25:17):
And I could find things in the Quran that they
were doing that was un Islamic to begin with. And
I was like, oh, so I should not be getting
references about what this faith is from them, but instead
from them. So that started things changing. I'd never consider
(25:40):
myself an intellectual person, but I started. I started going
through this, I started thinking about it, and I kept reading.
I kept reading, and you know, I come across passages
of chapter five, thirty second verse where it says, to
save one human life is as if you had saved
all of humanity, and I'm like, wow, wow, But to
(26:04):
kill or take one human life is as if you
killed all of humanity, so that totally blew these people away.
I had no nothing for them anymore.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
We'll be right back, all right. I'm a Christian. I
also like to consider myself. I really like to understand
different viewpoints. I also think faith regardless of your denomination,
(26:43):
your Christian denomination, or whether you're you subscribe to Islam
or Hindu or what, I think it's a very personal thing.
So I'm gonna tread lightly. Well, let me say it
a different way. I don't do much lightly. I'm gonna
(27:03):
tread respectfully. I know that saying. I've heard it before.
To take one life is to take all of humanity,
and to save one life is save all of humanity,
or something like that. It's close, right. I know I'm
not quoting the Koran, but that's the Gist's what's the version,
(27:25):
Chapter five two, verse five thirty two. The men who
flew the planes into the world trades and in the
Pentagon that Americans today who served there cleaning it up
are still dying of cancers, some of which don't even
(27:49):
have a name. So the three thousand odd people that
died on that day are just a drop in the
bucket of the people that are still dying from that event,
and it is horrific. I know a lot of people
who are Muslim, who are American Muslims, who are affected
(28:11):
no differently by that event than I am, exactly. But
the fact is the people who flew those planes into
those buildings were yelling Allah bar and subscribed to a
(28:31):
faith that they called Islam. And what five point thirty
two says and what they did don't agree, No, they don't.
I want to give you an opportunity to a largely
non Muslim audience to help me, as an American and
(28:52):
a Christian, understand that.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
And that is the difficult And I appreciate you asking
me that question.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
I really do.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
I I'm being very serious because that that that's the
kind of questions that need to be asked, right and
and and and and Unfortunately, there's not a lot of
Muslims that are willing.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
To go there. No, there's not. And that's also a
problem asking that's respectfully, they're their own worst enemy to
their faith by not going there, just like a Christian
is his own worst enemy to his faith. When the
over someone who's on the fence about faith and Christianity
(29:39):
and they hear the narrative, believe like me, or you're
rotten in hell for the rest of your life. If
that is what my faith is, we got a tough
thing to sell, you know what I mean? And that
is not Our faith is about love and grace and
redemption and forgiveness and and and all of that. I
(30:01):
do not believe that Muslims are gathered around a Kuran
trying to figure out how to kill the next three
thousand Americans. And I hear what you're saying about five
point thirty two, but it is hard for an American
Christian to know who those people were and what they
were subscribed to, as well as Osama bin Laden, as
(30:22):
well as all that's going on across the country and
in the Middle East right now. Help us, help us
understand it.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Sure, so, I'm not a geopolitical expert by no means
need neither, But I do have an understanding Christianity, which
I have the utmost respect for and love. Matter of fact,
somebody asked me one time how hard it was for
me to convert from Christianity to Islam. I said, well,
(30:53):
I wasn't a Christian, and they said what I said, No,
I was not a Christian, I said, I would never
say it was a Christian, I said, and that's only
because of my love and respect for that religion. The
way I was acting, the way I was speaking, that's not.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Christian you know.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
So yeah, so it's out of that respect for Christianity.
But with the terrorists, because that's what they were, the terrorists,
they are labeled as Muslims because that was the claim.
(31:31):
Too many people came out afterwards claiming that yes they
were Muslim, they were devout.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
No, they weren't.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
I my religion has a restriction to where I can't
say somebody's not a Muslim. I can't say that.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
You're not allowed to judge it. Yeah, Christianity has the
same same deal.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
So I'm not going to say that they weren't Muslims.
I will say for the for the simple fact that
they were not in any way, any way, shape or form,
acting Islamically. They were driven, brainwashed, I don't know, agreed retribution, payback.
(32:21):
One of the things that really got Osama bin Laden
started was desert storm. He had told the Saudi government
because where that's where he was from and where most
of the hijackers were from.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Right an American ally, Yeah, I know, I don't understand,
which a lot of people did not forget.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
I do not want to get on that soapbox. But anyway,
so he offered his Mujahideen holy warriors right from Afghanistan
to come back to Saudi Arabia or to go to
Saudi Arabia where he was from, to defend against Iraq,
because that was Saddam's plan, was he was gonna keep
going south right.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
He ye, and then yep, and until you guys showed up.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Well that that was what hurt, you know, as I
you know, excuse my reference, but he was butt hurt.
He got but hurt because because the Saudi government said,
now we got the Americans coming, it's cool. You guys
just stayed there and it's all right. That's what started
(33:33):
the whole contemplation of how to get back at America.
And the fact that we were in fidels, which is
not even a proper term to be used in that
in that statement, but and we were on the holy land,
Saudi Arabia's you know, two holy sites in Saudi Arabia's
(33:54):
three holy sites in Islam ones in Jerusalem and the
other two are in Saudi Arabia, and so we kind
of like dirty up to the land. In his eyes, right,
he did have a lot of geopolitical interests. He was
a man of means, money and he was going to
(34:16):
do everything he could in his mind. Well, I don't
even know what his understanding of Islam was. I have
no idea, And to be honest with you, I'm not
really interested because he's nobody.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
To me. He was.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
He was a bad person. I will say that he
found a way because he was a very correct, charismatic person.
I mean, look at what he did. You know, he
was able to get people to follow along with his ideas,
even as far as giving up their own life. That
(34:55):
is brings back stories of John Jones.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
David Kriesh, I was just about to say to you
and to our listeners as you're listening to this, what
you're saying is men of power take uneducated folks and
perturb a religion to make them extreme in order to
(35:26):
carry out acts that have nothing to do with faith
or religion but are more about geopolitical and social issues.
And if you have your hard time to get your
arms around that. As a Christian American, you need to
try to remember that right next to often times strung
(35:49):
up black Americans for the burning Christian cross yeah and
bibles that is not Christianity. Is a perturbing of a faith. Yeah.
(36:10):
And if you can't get your arms around that this
has happened among many fays and many cultures, then you'll
never understand that the people who subscribe to Islam that
flew the planes into the buildings and the Pentagon are
not with the vast majority of the people worshiping in
(36:31):
mosques think or believe absolutely, you know and it but
you hate Muslims. Well, I'm gonna let you get to
the rest of it here in a minute. But is
that a fair statement what I said? Absolutely, But you
(36:51):
didn't know that when you showed up and you asked
kron and you're going to prove to your daughter while
blowing these folks up is a good thing. And then
people started hugging you.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Yeah, I know that was not to mention being a veteran,
you know, I mean I hugged people anyway, you know,
which has got me into some trouble because in Islam
we're not to shake hands or to hug women, right
that are not related to us. So I was speaking
(37:27):
at a Holocaust museum in Chicago and Jesse Jackson's daughter
came there to see me, and she came up to
me and just reached out and give me a hug.
There was pictures taken that became a total social media
nightmare for me. Really, yes, because we call them the
(37:47):
halal police. Right, Halal means permissible, Haram means impermissible. Okay,
so what was happening was haram. We call them the
halal police because they'll come out, Oh, you.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Can't do that.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
You can't do that, brother, Oh what do you thinking?
What are you thinking?
Speaker 1 (38:03):
I'm like, oh, my gosh, man, the woman hugged me.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
The woman hugged me, and.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
By the way, and there's nothing behind us, so take
a pill.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Well I did feel that way, I really did. At first,
I became very defensive and I lasked out as some
of these people, and then one person calmly explained it
to me. He says, yes, of course, there was nothing
meant by what you were doing, nothing at all from
(38:34):
either person involved in that. But you're a public figure now,
people look up to you. Especially the young people. They
see stuff like that. It confuses them. Yes, was there
any harm done?
Speaker 1 (38:52):
No?
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Not really. My wife knew about it. She didn't care.
And that's the only one I'd care to be upset
about it, right, because she knows. But it's how it perceived, right,
And and so you know, that's a lot of times
when a woman comes towards me, you know, and I
know she's gonna ask to shake my hand, you know,
(39:13):
and it's it. I just put my hand up to
my chest. I think I did that out there, right, Yeah,
that's right, you didn't. You did.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
It's done as a means of respect, not disrespect. So
there's a matter of this bomb you made.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
So now you've found out these people in this mosque
or loving decent people, and you're not going to explode
them anymore. But le's they shows up at your apartment.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah, if I can, let me go back a little bit, Yeah,
to explain the whole concept of what you were thinking.
Because of the ignorance, right, surrounded by not only Muslims
with their own faith, but Christians also back in the
Middle A, right, a large part of christiendom was ignorant
they couldn't read and write, right, they were serfs and
(40:07):
they worked, and that's all they did. They didn't They're
the only people that could read and write were the priests,
and they were all families. And the Bible at that
time was in Latin anyway, So the priest told you
what the Bible said. They were the interpreters of the
Bible exactly, which is not any different than what a
(40:30):
minister or preacher is now is an interpreter of of
what it's saying, right to to give out to his
to his people, to this congregation, right, and and and
that's and that's good. It should be that that's what
the moms do, right, right, the good of moms. So
which I will get to. So we have crusades, we
have the heresy of the knights. Templars, right, nice templars,
(40:54):
didn't do anything wrong. French king and the pope at
the time got together. France was broke. Templars are controlling
all the land in the Middle East, in the area
of Jerusalem and surrounding areas. So oh, let's make them heretics,
and that way we just confiscate their property. So now
(41:15):
we're not broke, right, that's a true story that actually
happened Afghanistan. We had captured a or not we not me,
but the American forces there had captured a would be
suicide bomber. He was going to drive in a truck
full of explosives into the gate at Camp leather Neet,
(41:36):
which had been done anyway, eventually got done anyway, It's
not by him. So I sat in on this interrogation.
This guy, the guy who was doing it, was doing
the interrogation, was actually a Muslim. It was a marine
who had converted Islam, married a local girl, okay, and
he was all into it. Man. I used to tease
(41:58):
him all the time in a fun way, but really
I could have just like cut his throat right there.
That's the way I felt about him, right. But he
would keep this little knapsack and he'd have a Koran
in English and a Koran in Pashtun, which was what
his wife spoke, right, So he was he was constantly
looking at it, constantly looking through it and trying to learn.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Right.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
And so we get this guy in there. He's leaning
forward in a chair that's bolted to the ground with
chains that are also on these like hooks. The I
forget what they're calling.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
But you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
And they were in there his hands. Yeah, very very
uncomfortable position. And we're talking to him, and he threw interpreters.
He pipes up and he says, he says, if I
kill the infidel, I'm guaranteed Heaven right now. You hear
that statement a lot.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
What we think. I'm so glad you're doing this because
I was going to ask about it.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
And and this is where this is where going back
to nine at eleven, how this kind of ties in.
The interrogator at that time picked out in me says, really,
hold on a second, goes over to his knapsack, gets
the Koran out and pashtune, slides it across the table,
tells him through interpreters, if you can show me where
(43:20):
it is in that book that it says that, I'll
let you go. The dude sunk his head.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
And said, I can't read.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
I can't read. That's what the mom told us. So
there's a tie in there, okay. And and and that's
a huge part that still is is throughout Islam is
a large portion of our population throughout the world is ignorant.
They can't read. They can't write. And that's how you
(43:51):
get these guys who have agendas to tie in that.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Can indoctrinate the most needy and uneducated among them to
do their bidding for things that have nothing to do
with their religion.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Right now, it's it's the duty of all Muslims to
try to memorize the Koran, okay, even parts of it.
So I know they have memorized parts of the Quran,
but they don't have the educational background to even decipher
what they're what they're reciting. So it's it's like, you know,
(44:27):
it's I can read something, but if I don't know
what this word means, or I don't know how this
sentence structures. Yeah, you know, I don't. I don't know.
But all this guy's explaining it to me. He's a
respected person, you know. So there's so many similarities there,
especially from the early Church to Islam too, and and
(44:52):
and and I don't speak a lot about Judaism because
I really don't know that much about Judaism, but but
I'm sure there's a tie in there too.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
We'll be right back. You went in looking to kill
them all and ended up loving them all, and frankly
them loving you, but you still made a freaking bomb.
And we're playing around blowing these folks up. And at
(45:25):
some point, I know the FBI catches wind of the
pre mentality you.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Well, so here's how that happened. It had already happened,
you know, I mean, this conversion, this change of heart,
whatever you want to say. I had disposed of a bomb,
disposed of all the parts properly, then just throw them
in a dumpster. I got it, and it's went on
(45:53):
about my life. I now, nobody at this point even
knows what you're plans for. Anybody that knew me knew
I hated Muslims.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Yeah, no idea. They had no idea of your building.
You kept that under your hat, just me. Nobody else
got it until that. So, so I was.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
I was in college now because the VA, you know,
I'm part of the system now in the VA says, hey,
why why don't you go to cause I can't do
labor work. I would have loved to have been to welder,
but your back's shot, can't do it got blown up. Yeah,
so I have to do a behind a desk job now,
you know. So I have to go to college for
that because I'm I'm dumber in the box of rocks. Okay,
(46:35):
so I got to learn something, right. And so I'm
in I'm in class, and I'm forty somedd years old,
mid forties, and I'm so. I had a different relationship
with my professors than the twenty something students. We were
actually more friends.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
You know.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
I was sitting in an office drinking coffee with one
of my professors and I don't even know why. I
don't know what started the whole conversation, but I told her.
I told her the story.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
You're kidding me? No, you said, hey, you know what, Yeah,
I built a bomb and I was going to blow
these fools up. Now I'm one of them.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
How'd that go over?
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Yeah? Yeah. She was like, oh my gosh. And she
knew me on the outside through charity organizations stuff that
I had been a part of and start and done
stuff for and everything like that, so she knew I
was not just talking to be talking, right, And she goes,
oh my gosh, she goes, you have got to tell
(47:37):
that story that could change people's lives. I'm like, really,
I didn't think nothing of it, you know, it's something
that happened it's over whatever, you know, And she says,
what are you doing the rest of the days? Said, well,
when I finish this coffee, I was can go home
and go to sleep. I ain't got nothing else to do.
She goes, no, you got my next class tell that story.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
So I did.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Somebody in that class was shocked that here this guy
is saying that he made a bomb.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
An unbalanced former marine in our midst.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
And now he's a Muslim.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
Yo.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
No, he's making phone calls saying you got check his
dude out. And there there they come. And it was
funny because you know, a lot of times I and
I think this is a guy thing too, where we'll
say stuff and is like, as soon as it leaves
our mouth, we're trying to reach out and grab it back.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Yeah, Because they showed up, introduced themselves, and I was like,
what took you so long? That's what I said to him.
And as soon as I said that, I was like, dude,
oh man, And and so we talked. It started out
as a like a health and comfort kind of visit,
(48:58):
right to make sure I was.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
Okay waterboarding, but they were investigating.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
So we talked about it and I told him I said, yeah,
it's going So they said, well, do you mind if
we uh do an investigation for explosives here in the house.
And I said, At half hour later, I'm handcuffed in
the front lawn, bomb dogs going through my house and
then my wife and my daughter pull up.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
They didn't know anything. Even after the fact, they didn't
know about it. I didn't even tell them, and I
already told her a professor at school.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
You know, I tell you.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
So I'm like most husbands. I don't tell my wife nothing.
But but but it was, it was, you know, that
was that was the beginning at the end of that marriage.
Because there's people in FBI jackets, local police department, and
I'm in a I live in an apartment complex. It's
(49:49):
a big deal. Everybody's out.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
I read and they didn't find it, and they found
you to no longer be a threat and all of that.
What is astonishing to me is now you have to
tell these people that you've now joined in your house
of worship that yeah, I was gonna kill all y'all
(50:15):
and they invited you to dinner.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
Well, hospitality is big in the Islamic world, especially in
the postun culture, and Bib and her family are from
that culture. They're from Afghanistan, so hospitality is big.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
Hey.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
I used to make the joke, I said, because people
we would always when we were doing as you know,
those where you go around and do the premieres and
all that stuff, and people would ask about the food, right,
because Bbe is like, out of this world a cook.
I mean, she's oh my gosh. And I tell people,
I said, man, I used to wear one hundred and
ninety pounds before I went to her house. I'm two
(50:59):
fifty six, all right, And I said, yeah, don't even
drive by her house because you will look in your
every mirror and should be chasing you down with a plate.
That's the way she is, right, Oh, man, I love
her so much.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
But so.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
It was the fact that it was being talked about
because things were being heard because of course I started
talking about it, not telling them like I said. I
still I told that class. I'm not, like I said,
I'm still not that smart. I never graduated high school.
(51:36):
I have two degrees now, but I never graduated high
school and you would. And so it's proof that just
having a degree does not make you smart.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
They had heard about it, and it made a lot
of people uncomfortable, unbeknownst to me, and she she did.
This was not the first time she invited me to
her house, but now, yeah, she she had intentions.
Speaker 1 (51:57):
Now, well, no, I just wonder if in my church
there was a former Muslim who fought for the Iranian
Republican Guard who had formerly gone as far to build
a bomb and had plans to put it under our
sanctuary on Christmas Eve, who then converted and we found
(52:22):
all this out, if our first reaction would be, hey,
let's have him over to dinner to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
Yeah, I know, I know, Well that's what happened. Yeah,
that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Well, I mean, we need to check ourselves just a
little because to me, that is the ultimate in grace
and courage, because I gotta believe there were people in
her community going what Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:50):
Yeah, people still get they still get a laugh out
of that, regardless of whether they're in the community or not,
they still get a laugh out of it, because yeah,
it's like, are you serious? I wouldn't want that person
in my house, right.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
And she invited you to her home with her family
for dinner.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
And there was friends there too. There was other other
people from the community they were there also, and you know,
I was just talking to everybody, and you know, I
I guess looking back, I noticed it was an uncomfortable
feeling that was kind of in the air, I would assume,
but I did. It didn't really hit me much, you know,
because I mean, here, I'm I'm I'm one of you,
(53:31):
now right. You know, I didn't even didn't even give
it a much thought.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
I also read that one of your all right, in
a church, it's a prishoner. What do you call a
fellow islam worshiping person from your house of worship? What
do you call that person? Is there for that?
Speaker 2 (53:46):
It's his brother?
Speaker 1 (53:47):
Okay, brother or sister or sister. He's an African American
guy who's American, grew up in America, whose grandfather was
castro and hung in Munthsy, Indiana, who hated white people.
Who is now your brother? Oh yeah, How did he
(54:12):
take the news of the bomb?
Speaker 2 (54:13):
Well, he was just like everybody, I guess when they
did really, when they did find out, he.
Speaker 1 (54:21):
Was shocked, you know, even he for grieve.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
Yeah, yeah, I mean see, And that's that's the similarities
of what our faith stands for.
Speaker 1 (54:33):
We have to forgive.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
And there's even a psychological advantage to that, because nobody's
asking you to forget anything. But when you forgive, you
let everything go and and and that's the beauties of
our religion. If there's punishment to be dealt, it's not
by us, and it's not really even our concern mac.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
My faith teaches that not only do you have to
give others, you have to give yourselves. How you doing
with that?
Speaker 2 (55:06):
In large?
Speaker 1 (55:08):
I have?
Speaker 2 (55:10):
And the only reason I say that is because people
have come up to me and they have told me
that I have helped, I have answered questions, warned parts,
give people hope. I don't think I'm a big deal.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
I do not.
Speaker 2 (55:32):
I'm just a guy with a story. I really. I mean,
that's the way I look at myself, right, And and
it is very humbling at times, you know, But but
I always go back to one of one of my
favorite comments that I had ever received on my message.
And I won't tell you exactly what he said, because
it was it was it's the way I used to talk, right,
(55:55):
But but he was very he was very honest, and
he said, if a tough guy like you can change
the way he thinks about things. I guess I can too.
That's what it's all about.
Speaker 1 (56:05):
Well, that's the payoff, isn't it. That's it. We'll be
right back. I got a question. What do you feel
like you have to forgive yourself for? Because in the film,
(56:29):
the documentary, you talked about having a hard time at
first forgiving yourself and I found that to be odd
because you didn't blow the bomb up. So we're not
talking about the bomb, I assumed, and correct me if
I'm wrong. You're talking about the twenty five years in
the military. Absolutely, but make you were serving under orders
(56:59):
doing a really unsavory but unconvenient and uncomfortable truth that
we have to have people defending us or we won't
be able to have conversations like this because you can't
have this conversation a lot of countries in this world,
we have that liberty, and that liberty is precious and
(57:22):
it requires guys like you who did the work that
you did in the military to provide us with the
freedoms to explore and understand and grow from one another
like this. So what do you need to forgive yourself for?
Is it the fact that you killed people that worship
(57:42):
like you do. Now, it.
Speaker 2 (57:46):
Encompasses a lot of things. Really, it's the shame that
I got enjoyment out of it. So now I you know,
you had sayd something with which is really a very
prominent misunderstanding. Okay, is that you mentioned we were under orders.
(58:08):
That's part true because I rose up in rank, okay,
and the higher I got it basically a lot of
times became my call. We were given a task. You
go from here, you go here, and you make it safe.
(58:29):
That's the task.
Speaker 1 (58:30):
How is a different deal?
Speaker 2 (58:31):
How's a different deal?
Speaker 3 (58:35):
I do have.
Speaker 1 (58:38):
Issue with that and the fact that I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (58:46):
On the surface, I guess because I would come back
from operations that I would set and cry for a
while on my own, just go somewhere. I cry because
it was hard, you know. And the hardest thing was
(59:09):
even I mean, I understood the reason behind it, but
even the dead children.
Speaker 1 (59:17):
Man, you can't some things you cannot see.
Speaker 2 (59:22):
You just can't, man.
Speaker 1 (59:23):
And it.
Speaker 2 (59:27):
It'll haunt me for the rest of my days, man,
And I know God's forgiven me. You know, it's our thing.
Like the Baptism and Christianity, right, sins are worst away.
At that point you start over, right, we take shaht
it's decoration of faith, right, and we do that publicly.
(59:49):
Once we do that, sins are gone. At that point
start again. So I do feel in my heart that
God's forgiven me. And in the grand scheme of things,
does it really matter if I ever forgive myself or not? Not? Really,
God forgive me, That's all that matters.
Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
Right, But.
Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
Uh, it's just uh man, it's a hard thing.
Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
It And there's men and women all of our country
who served our country dutifully that are all still probably
dealing with a lot of that. And that is the
price they pay for our ability to have this chat today.
Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
Very true, very true. You know one in five homeless
people are veterans.
Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
Yeah, I know, yeah, I read that not too long ago.
That is shameful.
Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
That is shameful. And you know, as in on the
government speed we can send billions of dollars in military
aid to a country, but we come back here and
we sit down and go, yeah, all economic problems because
all the single moms on food stamps.
Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
What you are now married to a Christian woman, which
is hilarious. You are you have been the president of
your mosque twice, and you've taken the opportunity of your
story and a documentary that's an OSCAR nominated documentary. It's
(01:01:25):
only thirty minutes. You guys should watch it. That's had
over a million views. And now you have a social
work degree. Tell me what you're doing with your life now.
Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
Well. So I do have a degree in social work,
which means I'm broke. I was working as a life coach,
and when this film kicked off, and I was going
here and there for all the premieres and everything, I
decided to step down. I resigned from my position. And
(01:01:59):
because I want to focus on this message. And it's
not to say that this message is an end all,
it's not. It's a step. I don't look at myself
as somebody that's fascinating necessarily or I'm nobody special.
Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
I mean, my teachers just say that about me. But
I'm nobody special, right, And I just want people to
stop and think. So I travel and I meet with people,
not all of them like me. I've had death threats,
you know. I tell people, considering the first part of
(01:02:44):
my life was people trying to kill me. If that
all of a sudden stopped. I probably go through some
kind of separation anxiety.
Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
Right, So it's I'm.
Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
Good, I'm good. Keep it up, guys. But but so
I I just want people stop and think. You don't
have to agree with me. Some people are not going
to agree with me. Most people might not agree with me.
That's fine, but stop and think there may be other options.
I use the example of a hand.
Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
You have you lay your hand out, spread your fingers,
and this signifies differences in humanity, whether it's religion, race,
you know, uh, social culture, whatever, it doesn't matter. Right,
and it's a hand. It's a tool. You can do
a lot with a hand. Right, But when it comes
(01:03:35):
to having things that have to be done and it
has to be done the right way and you have
to stand firm, what do you do bring it all together?
Because this, my friends, is unbreakable, and until we can
get to this, it's not gonna work.
Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
Matt, your story is crazy. From a drug dealing and
using high school drop out to a twenty five year
veteran of our military who learned to hate Muslims, who
got blown up, who decided he was going to blow
(01:04:16):
up some Muslims and wanted to prove that that was
a good thing to do to the one thing he
loved on the face of the planet, which was his daughter,
And through trying to prove that, found love and faith
and forgiveness not only of himself but of everything, and
(01:04:40):
converted Islam and is now trying to use all of
that experience to get people to just listen to one another.
That's your life, bro.
Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
Yeah, I usually end my talks with Years ago, very
wise Man made a statement that will forever live in history.
He said, I have a dream, I have a plan,
and it starts with a smile and a conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
I love that. Mac. If somebody wants to meet you here,
you have them speak. How do they find Mac?
Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
I am all over social media?
Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
Give me some handle? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
Yeah, so I did start an LLC called From Hate
to Understanding. If you want to write an email, it's
from hate from hate to Understanding all one word at
gmail dot com that go straight to you, I go
straight to me. Yeah, I'm not I'm not that big.
I don't have people doing my paperwork stuff for me.
(01:05:44):
I don't read my emails. I do TikTok. I'm an
old guy, but it gets to the young people. And
that's this Richard mack McKinney on TikTok and Facebook, I
can't invite anybody to Facebook because I'm full.
Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
That's a limit? No more friends after five thousand?
Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
Yeah, Richard McKinney, everybody otherwise known as Mac brother, thanks
for coming to Memphis spend some time with me and
sharing your story and sharing it so openly. I have
really enjoyed being able to discuss some of the things
that I think people really wonder about. And I hope
we've challenged some people to maybe think about things differently, because,
(01:06:26):
as you know, I don't think the narratives coming out
of DC or the national media do anything but serve
to divide us. And I think when an army of
normal folks, regardless of how you worship, what you look like,
who you love, or what you believe, can come together
and have open, civil, non threatening conversations about the stuff
(01:06:49):
that we differ on, is how we can maybe close
that hand. One day and you're at the tip of
the sphere. You've been on a tip of the spear
of your whole life, and you're the tip of the
sphere of another fight. And I'll tell you I sleep
well at night knowing there were men like you on
the wall back when you were serving our country in
the military. And I sleep well at night knowing there's
(01:07:10):
men like you on the wall the tip of the
spear trying to close the frist. And I appreciate you
joining us fun, Thank you, thanks you being here, and
thank you for joining us this week. If Richard McKinney
or another guest has inspired you in general, or better yet,
(01:07:33):
inspired you to take action by bringing Richard to speak
to a group in your area or something else entirely,
please let me know. I'd love to hear about it.
You can write me anytime at Bill at normalfolks dot us.
I personally will respond. And if you enjoyed this episode,
share it with friends and on social subscribe to the podcast,
(01:07:55):
rate and review it. Please consider becoming a premium member
at normalfolks dot us. All these things that can help
us grow an army of normal folks guys. The more folks,
the more possibility we have to make an impact. For
premium members, we'll have bonus content from this episode, with
(01:08:17):
Mac telling the story of nominating his now friend BB,
a woman to be the head of their mosque, which
is revolutionary. If you don't want to miss it, become
a Premium Member today. I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you
next week.
Hey, everybody, it's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks.
And we continue now with part two of our conversation
with mac McKinney, right after these brief messages from our
generals sponsors. So a rock is where you got blowed up?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah, we went in. So I was doing interrogations and
I begged, I begged to go on a mission, go
outside the wire. Please let me go.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Oh, because you're stuck behind doing interrogations. If you want
to be out in the field, I want to be
on the field.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
It's like, you know, this is great, man, but this
is like, this is like punching a heavy bag. It's
not gonna hit your bag, right, and it gets boring. Uh,
And they finally let me go. They gave me a team.
We worked up. We had intel there was going to
(01:09):
be a an al Qaida lieutenant at such and such building.
We're gonna hood over the head bring them in, right, Yeah,
so it's a big operation.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Just bring them in mean alive or dead? Or did
you want them alive? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
You want them alive?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah. Yeah. So we got to the building. I mean,
and this is a bigger this is this isn't just
like five guys. This is like, you know, you have
a security team that actually cordon's off like a two
block radius. Then you have an extraction team which is
also your delivery team, but your distraction team which is
waiting on the street so you can you know, high
(01:48):
tail it out, and then the assault team, which was
us when we went into the building. We went into
the building. Man, there was nobody there. They had a
bunch of stuff that was laught. All we got we
well it doesn't at her because we never brought it back,
but there was a there was a lot of intel there.
(02:08):
I went back up on the second floor as my
team was gathering all the information on the front or
on the first floor, and because we had this big
hole blown that was blown through the wall that looked
out onto the street. And it's so easy for me
to talk about this because I have no memory of
what happened after this To this day, I don't remember.
(02:32):
I like to joke about it because of that, because
I don't have any memory of it.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
No physical pain, No physical pain, well that moment's pain.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
No, No, it was like I don't even I can't
even recall hearing a boom. I just remember looking out
onto the street, and being up higher, I can look
around and make sure everything. You know, we're not going
to walk out into something, right, because we're safe in
this building. We leave, we're not safe anymore. So I
want to make sure that me and my team are
good to go. That's the last thing I remember. I
(03:05):
woke up several days later with a chaplain sitting next
to my bed. I come to and I was like,
what the hell you know I'm looking at I know
him in a hospital, right, And then I got kind
of mad because I'm like, I didn't die right by
(03:26):
my whole destiny about coming back in the flag dray Coffin.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
I just I'm like, oh crap, man, suping legs are wondering.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
I did that once before in Desert's form. I got
a piece of strapping on my head up here, but
uh yeah, I did that once before.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
But but like am I am? I all intact?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
That didn't hit me at first. I'm I'm just kind
of like, oh man, And and I hear a noise
because the chaplain jumped up, and I look over and
I you know, I see him, and I see his uniform.
He's got crossed right here on his chest and it's
so great. That's wonderful. Uh And and he looks at me,
says certain, and he says, I got to tell you something.
You are a one lucky individual. He says, you died.
(04:11):
I said what they said. Yeah, when they brought you in,
they were treating you and you flatlined and the doctor
brought you back. It's like I'm trying to think, and
I'm like, nope, I got no stories of bright lights
or anything. So I was, as far as I know,
I was just asleep. And he says, he says, you
(04:33):
have somebody watching over you.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Definitely do.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
And I says, sir, I gotta tell you no disrespect
to your position in life. But he don't want me.
I'm like highlander up in here. I can't die. I've tried,
and that the Chaplain's just looking at me like, oh
my gosh.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Man.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
And then people started coming in telling me that they're
you know, I'm being processed for medical retirement. I already
had over twenty years.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
What happened to you? What was wrong with your body?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Oh? Just I mean just scarring. Uh. I got some
shrapnel scars on my on my left half and uh,
my back just was obliterated. My shoulder is this dislocated?
It never really healed? Right?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
So what happened? Was there a bomb in there?
Speaker 2 (05:25):
I'm sorry?
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah? Yeah, no, I mean.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
There was an id underneath the building. Uh, and the
dead and so it's almost like we were set up
and it.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Was someone else step on it. Oh no, they remotely
activated it from a phone. Once you got to a phone.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah, yeah, probably a phone.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
So they were watching you somewhere. Yeah yeah, did you
fly off the second floor.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Well, so this this youngster came in. He came in
to see a friend in the hospital there. It was
like a mass hospital, right, He come in to see
a friend. He saw me, and he's like, Sorge. He said,
my god, man, he says, are you okay? I says,
I don't know. Man, they're kicking me out, and he says, brother.
(06:10):
He says, you don't even know. He says, man, the
only thing missing from you was a cape because you
flew straight across the street. That's what he told me.
Like I said, I like to make a joke of
it because it's I have no memory of it, and
I'm very thankful. I'm very thankful I don't because I
probably have nervous breakdown, but I have no memory of it,
(06:31):
but it messed me up for a while. And they
come in and they start telling me about the process
seeing me for medical retirement, and I was like, we're
not doing this. I'm going back to Rack.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
And he looked at me and they were.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Like it was like they were military, but they were
like the hospital social workers, right, And it says, hard
and why do you want to go back to Rack?
I looked dead in the eyes. So I'm not done
killing Muslims yet. If I wasn't getting out before I
said that, I was definitely getting out when I after
(07:06):
I said that, because they just like looked at me
and they're like oh, and then he walked out. Yeah.
Next thing you know, I got a guy sitting across
from me with his legs cross going. So how does
that make you feel?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
You know what I mean? Sitting Yeah. Yeah. So now
you're out and your home and you're back in Monthly, which.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Was never really my home originally.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Anyway, Okay, but you're in months yeah, Well, I because
it was my home record, it was a mailing address
for a lot of years.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
I had joined the Army from there when I was
trying to work. You know, I had no job skills.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
President, there's really not much of a job in the
United States for killing Muslims. Well, we the teams, we
would always around like what you were good at? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Yeah, we tell people, or we used to talk to
my self as a man, I said, I don't know
what I'm gonna do when we get out. I said,
there's only three things I could really do anything. I'd
be a hit man for the mob, a pimp, or
a drug dealer. I don't really have any other skills.
And I was like, that's so true, because I had
no education. I had a GED. I got a ged
(08:23):
was Marie or in the Marine Corps. They made me
because I could have cared less. And I have no
job skills. So what am I doing. I'm twenty five
years old working as a labor work for a commercial
roofing company. Hard work, right as a labor And I
was on that roof and I'm like shoveling stuff over
(08:45):
the side into the big, big trash bend they have,
and I'm like listening to the foreman talk down to me,
and I'm like, dude, you don't even know me. Because
like two years before that. I mean, I was a
bodyguard for President Bush when he came to small Year.
He lost the election to Clinton, and he twenty five
(09:09):
Marines got picked to be his basically bodyguards of The
official title is bullet catcher as all was, you know,
because he's in a war zone, right but still still
and you're gonna talk down to me, man, redneck piece
of tracks.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
That's what I thought.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I walked right off the job site into the Army recruiter's.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Office and that's when you join the army.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And say, hey, man, when's the bustle league? Dude? Come
out of here? And I went back when my duty.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
But now you're forty five ish and inn Muncie. You
spent twenty five years developing a very unique skill set
that doesn't translate back to the States. No, what are
you doing so nothing? But you're hating Muslims.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
But I'm hating Muslims. And that's the first time I noticed.
I mean, they had always been there, but I've never
noticed them before. And here they are everywhere, at the Walmart,
at the Walmart, oh, at Applebee's. My wife at the
at the at the time, she would get so nervous
(10:18):
going to going shopping.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Your wife then's name was Dana.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Tell us about Emily, Oh man, I was introduced to
Emily when she was four years old.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
This is Dana's data's daughter. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Her dad's a foreign national. He's from Mexico, and uh,
he got in a lot of trouble here. So he
was deported with basically a sticker on his butt saying
do not return. Right, So she didn't have a dad,
and me and her just became like best buddies.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
To hear her talk about you is phenomenal. There's a
short third minute documentary about what we're about to discuss
and your life. We've caught it up to that point.
The name of the documentary is Stranger at the Gates, right,
Stranger at the Gate, and it's an Academy Award nominee.
When I watched it and I listened to Emily speak
(11:18):
about you, she revered you. You were her dad. Oh
and she was just a pup at this time, right
four or five, six, seven years old, and you're her.
You take her riding, you take her driving, where you
are she is, and you were you were her father. Yeah,
(11:41):
and you cherish this girl, oh my gosh, more than
anything and given your unique skill set. Anybody hears a
harm harms a hair on her head. I imagine you
could have done more than waterboard.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Gladly go back to jail. I mean, I've been to
jail before, gladly returned, gladly returned for an extended stay.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Have no problem with that. And at the same time,
you're carrying this hate for Muslims and frankly, this innate
disgust that your destiny was stolen from you because now
you're alive, walking around the United States and you didn't
go out the way you thought you were.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I had no purpose except for being this little girl's dad.
Except for being a little girl's dad.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
So I had come up with a point. I found
out that these Muslims, there's a lot of them here.
Oh God, no, huh huh. So I had went and
found out where their building was at that time. It
was actually in a house that was in a neighborhood
(13:03):
that was right off Ball State University. Is the is
the university there in Muncie. It was right off campus,
right and I looked at it, and this is their mosque.
I guess I don't know what you call it. Well yeah, yeah, mosque.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
But this was their house of worship.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yeah, this was their house of where it was basically
just a house in a neighborhood, right, And I looked
around and I was like, I can't do nothing here, man,
this is not a a agreeable option because of all
of the Americans around here.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
And that's the way I looked at it. Did you
feel like they were a threat? Oh? Absolutely, you felt
like the Muslims that were at Walmart, at Applebee's and
hanging out this house at their place of worship and
we're going to school with your daughter, yeah, or a
risk mm hmm. You literally thought they were looking just
(14:03):
for ways to covertly murder you and your family and
Americans absolutely and destroy your country absolutely, which is the
only thing that mattered to you in the world was
your country and your daughter. Yep. And you look back
on it now and that is the most perturbed thinking
on the face of the planet. But that is where
you were. Yeah. Yeah, so you come up with a plan.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I had, you know, because all my experiences, I knew
how to make an ID. It's really very simple, you know,
a bomb. Yeah, and uh, I don't I don't speak
of it. More than that usually because the FBI had
me sign paperwork that I would not disclose what was
involved in the bomb.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
We're not going to talk about how to make it.
I don't think there's any I don't think that part
of the story does anybody any good. But let's just
say so, after twenty five years, you could make a bomb.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, yeah, So, And I had started putting together over
two years with the intent, with the intent that detonated
somewhere with these Muslims. I couldn't do it here because
of this house. It's in a neighborhood. Too many Americans around, right,
(15:18):
so the risk to others was just too substantial.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
I wasn't going to do that.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Then they moved and they got They took over an
office building that was kind of out in the middle
of nowhere, off the beaten path.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Perfect became a target.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
I got it now. So when I actually went into
the mosque that one day, the bomb was done. I
just needed time, a time and date, which I'd already
decided was going to be during Ramadan, which is the
holy month. Because it's kind of like Catholics and Christmas Mass, right,
(15:57):
everybody's there.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
So there were there was the biggest opportunity for the
greatest about a carnage and damage on that day.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Oh, it was going to be a Friday afternoon during
the month of Ramadan, because I knew they would all
be there and you were going to plant this thing
at their place and blow them up. I already had
a place for it everything. It was just a matter
of just waiting.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
You realize that that would make you no different than
the men who flew the planes into the World Trade Zone.
I know that now, But you didn't see yourself as
a terrorist. You saw yourself as a patriot. Absolutely absolutely.
(16:40):
Do you find it at all ironic that one of
your memories of your grandfather was wearing you out for
hanging out with a quote and I'm quoting what your
grandfather said, colored kid. And your greatest visceral reaction as
an adult was when a Muslim person side across from
(17:00):
your daughter. Do you find it interesting that from a
very young age, that idea was somewhere in the deepest
rests of your brain, probably baked into you.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
I didn't even I didn't even till I had already changed.
Didn't even see the irony in it all, because it
literally is the same thing literally is the same thing
of what I felt as a little kid to what
my daughter was feeling right now.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
And how do you how do you process that?
Speaker 2 (17:39):
When I finally figured that out, I didn't even know.
I was kind of like I was ashamed. Well, I mean,
you know, I spend a lot of time in the
shame arena anyway, just dealing with my past. But it
was there was just so much shame.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
It was like, man, you.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Are the dumbest individual. Walk upright, man, I mean, how
could you not see this?
Speaker 1 (18:04):
So you walk into this newly opened house of worship
for Muslims in Muncie, Indiana, and you are on part
recon mission because if you're looking around, you're also seeing
where the softest place is for this bomb to blow
up and everything else I'm assuming.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Well, I mean I had already had a spot picked
out that was on the opposite side of the building
because there were buildings over here, and I knew that
they would be hit by some of the debris, but
I was trying to make it as less as possible,
so that would have been an acceptable collateral damage. In
military planning, there was an acceptable and an unacceptable collateral
(18:46):
damage that would have been acceptable.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
So I read that when you were going off on
the Muslim community, your daughter looked at you like you
were nuts, and she couldn't understand why you were so
angry and had so much hatred toward Buslims, no differently
than you didn't understand your grandfather exactly. And so part
(19:13):
of the idea of showing up at this mosque was
to find out the truth about these people so that
she would understand why you blew them up.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
One day, I was looking for tangible proof I knew
the way I felt was the right way.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
You knew they were murderers, Oh I knew, and you
know they were head choppers, and you knew they were
here to destroy America. That's all you knew that you
wanted to prove to her.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
I needed something to show her. I needed, you know.
So I went there, introduced myself as somebody just wanted
to learn a little bit more about Islam, right, even
though I come from the mindset that even today a
lot of people say I learned all I needed to
learn about Islam on nine to eleven. But that's the way.
I just wanted that proof because I knew I was
(19:58):
going to get caught. I'm not get away with this.
Are you serious? You know? I mean you no, I didn't.
I didn't because I saw it as that patriot, patriot,
another chance to die for my country. I wasn't going
to get a flag, Dray Coffin. I would not even
get a military funeral because of what I did. And
(20:22):
none of that mattered. I actually believe that years down
the road they were going to build statues to me.
I actually believe that in my own mind.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
You know. So you go in this place to.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
So I went in, yeah, and I mean and I
was met with kindness. And I remember walking in and uh,
you know this one guy he actually played NBA. He
was African American and he was sitting on a bench
and he got got up in the shoe room because
you take your shoes off before you go in there.
And it took him like three minutes to stand up,
(20:58):
that's how tall he was. African American gentleman. He recently
passed and it was a very sad moment for the community.
But he played NBA basketball in the seventies. He dealt
with a lot of racism himself, right because of that.
But you know, he looked at me, and he smiled,
and he says, can I help you? Because he knew
I was like, why am I here? You know?
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah, I can only imagine this twenty five years of
being basically a rugged jar head walking into a place
that he hates and he despises everybody in it. You
couldn't have been walking in with a big, old charismatic
smile on your face. It was rough. It was rough.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
In the film, people say that they could tell something
was wrong, right, I'm not an actor. I tried, but
it was hard to cover up a lot of things, right.
I tried to smile. I tried to I shook hands,
you know.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
But it was rough.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And then I got introduced to the Southern African American
gentleman closer my own age. He's a little bit younger
than me, and he's the one who actually handed me
a koran. I know in the film it says Bbe
handed me a koran, but it was actually him. He says,
He says, hey, he says, you want to learn about Islam.
I want you to take his home and I want
you to read it. Come back and find me when
(22:20):
you got questions. I tell Muslims out to day, I said,
if you ever anybody comes up to you and they
want to learn it, they want to know about Islam,
hand him a Koran and tell them to come back
and find you when they got questions, right, because that's
the best advice in the world. And I was overjoyed
at this point because now you got the doctor went
(22:40):
to the bookstore and got a Koran. I never even
thought of that, never even thought of that. I'm like,
I got the Holy Grail to evil.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
They just handed it to it.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
And on top of that, they're going to explain it
to me.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
It was like, that is hilarious. I'm like, I'm like,
this is oh.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
I couldn't even imagine me and cruse of.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
My daughter that blowing these folks up and terrorize them
and murdering them is the right thing to do.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
So I jumped into it, man, I jumped into I
I I that was ended up becoming my passion. I'm
going to read this book and I'm gonna I'm gonna
highlight underline all kinds of stuff. Man, you thought I
was in a Bible study or something, right, And I'm
just I'm going out. I'm going back to the mosque.
It wasn't Ramadon. Yet I was there more often than
some of the Muslims were, and I'm going back and
(23:33):
hey man, what about this. This don't sound too cool.
And then they explain it to me and it's like, well,
I was contextualizing a lot, and they would explain, Okay,
here's what happened before, and here's what happened after, and
that's the reason this is right. Oh, that's not a
lot different than the old Tustaman. Okay, I got you,
I got you, okay, h And I go read some
(23:54):
more and I come back and you know, and then finally,
you know, with the other stuff that I had going
on on my own subconscious or whatever, I know, it's
a change was happening. And one of the biggest things
on the surface was the fact that through reading this
book and spending time with these people, you know, it's
(24:16):
the same thing with all religions, Right, we have a
text and we try to live our life as close
to that text as we can. Right, it's impossible to
be one hundred percent because we're human and we're.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Not making the first twenty five years text for you
was probably the Marine Handbook.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Absolutely, Absolutely, he's to be able to recite stuff by heart,
not a problem. So I'm reading this and you know, yeah,
there's some things in there that are questionable, and it's like, okay,
well they got explained to me. And then I keep reading.
It's like, there's not really any hate in this book,
and there's not it's not here, you know, and I'm thinking, okay, well,
(24:54):
what about these people over here, the people in my community, right,
we're acting close to what it says in this so
they're actually being what would be quote unquote good Muslims. Right,
all of my understanding of what Islam was and how
Muslims act were the ones that were shooting at me.
(25:17):
And I could find things in the Quran that they
were doing that was un Islamic to begin with. And
I was like, oh, so I should not be getting
references about what this faith is from them, but instead
from them. So that started things changing. I'd never consider
(25:40):
myself an intellectual person, but I started. I started going
through this, I started thinking about it, and I kept reading.
I kept reading, and you know, I come across passages
of chapter five, thirty second verse where it says, to
save one human life is as if you had saved
all of humanity, and I'm like, wow, wow, But to
(26:04):
kill or take one human life is as if you
killed all of humanity, so that totally blew these people away.
I had no nothing for them anymore.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
We'll be right back, all right. I'm a Christian. I
also like to consider myself. I really like to understand
different viewpoints. I also think faith regardless of your denomination,
(26:43):
your Christian denomination, or whether you're you subscribe to Islam
or Hindu or what, I think it's a very personal thing.
So I'm gonna tread lightly. Well, let me say it
a different way. I don't do much lightly. I'm gonna
(27:03):
tread respectfully. I know that saying. I've heard it before.
To take one life is to take all of humanity,
and to save one life is save all of humanity,
or something like that. It's close, right. I know I'm
not quoting the Koran, but that's the Gist's what's the version,
(27:25):
Chapter five two, verse five thirty two. The men who
flew the planes into the world trades and in the
Pentagon that Americans today who served there cleaning it up
are still dying of cancers, some of which don't even
(27:49):
have a name. So the three thousand odd people that
died on that day are just a drop in the
bucket of the people that are still dying from that event,
and it is horrific. I know a lot of people
who are Muslim, who are American Muslims, who are affected
(28:11):
no differently by that event than I am, exactly. But
the fact is the people who flew those planes into
those buildings were yelling Allah bar and subscribed to a
(28:31):
faith that they called Islam. And what five point thirty
two says and what they did don't agree, No, they don't.
I want to give you an opportunity to a largely
non Muslim audience to help me, as an American and
(28:52):
a Christian, understand that.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
And that is the difficult And I appreciate you asking
me that question.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
I really do.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
I I'm being very serious because that that that's the
kind of questions that need to be asked, right and
and and and and Unfortunately, there's not a lot of
Muslims that are willing.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
To go there. No, there's not. And that's also a
problem asking that's respectfully, they're their own worst enemy to
their faith by not going there, just like a Christian
is his own worst enemy to his faith. When the
over someone who's on the fence about faith and Christianity
(29:39):
and they hear the narrative, believe like me, or you're
rotten in hell for the rest of your life. If
that is what my faith is, we got a tough
thing to sell, you know what I mean? And that
is not Our faith is about love and grace and
redemption and forgiveness and and and all of that. I
(30:01):
do not believe that Muslims are gathered around a Kuran
trying to figure out how to kill the next three
thousand Americans. And I hear what you're saying about five
point thirty two, but it is hard for an American
Christian to know who those people were and what they
were subscribed to, as well as Osama bin Laden, as
(30:22):
well as all that's going on across the country and
in the Middle East right now. Help us, help us
understand it.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Sure, so, I'm not a geopolitical expert by no means
need neither, But I do have an understanding Christianity, which
I have the utmost respect for and love. Matter of fact,
somebody asked me one time how hard it was for
me to convert from Christianity to Islam. I said, well,
(30:53):
I wasn't a Christian, and they said what I said, No,
I was not a Christian, I said, I would never
say it was a Christian, I said, and that's only
because of my love and respect for that religion. The
way I was acting, the way I was speaking, that's not.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Christian you know.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
So yeah, so it's out of that respect for Christianity.
But with the terrorists, because that's what they were, the terrorists,
they are labeled as Muslims because that was the claim.
(31:31):
Too many people came out afterwards claiming that yes they
were Muslim, they were devout.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
No, they weren't.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
I my religion has a restriction to where I can't
say somebody's not a Muslim. I can't say that.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
You're not allowed to judge it. Yeah, Christianity has the
same same deal.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
So I'm not going to say that they weren't Muslims.
I will say for the for the simple fact that
they were not in any way, any way, shape or form,
acting Islamically. They were driven, brainwashed, I don't know, agreed retribution, payback.
(32:21):
One of the things that really got Osama bin Laden
started was desert storm. He had told the Saudi government
because where that's where he was from and where most
of the hijackers were from.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Right an American ally, Yeah, I know, I don't understand,
which a lot of people did not forget.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
I do not want to get on that soapbox. But anyway,
so he offered his Mujahideen holy warriors right from Afghanistan
to come back to Saudi Arabia or to go to
Saudi Arabia where he was from, to defend against Iraq,
because that was Saddam's plan, was he was gonna keep
going south right.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
He ye, and then yep, and until you guys showed up.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Well that that was what hurt, you know, as I
you know, excuse my reference, but he was butt hurt.
He got but hurt because because the Saudi government said,
now we got the Americans coming, it's cool. You guys
just stayed there and it's all right. That's what started
(33:33):
the whole contemplation of how to get back at America.
And the fact that we were in fidels, which is
not even a proper term to be used in that
in that statement, but and we were on the holy land,
Saudi Arabia's you know, two holy sites in Saudi Arabia's
(33:54):
three holy sites in Islam ones in Jerusalem and the
other two are in Saudi Arabia, and so we kind
of like dirty up to the land. In his eyes, right,
he did have a lot of geopolitical interests. He was
a man of means, money and he was going to
(34:16):
do everything he could in his mind. Well, I don't
even know what his understanding of Islam was. I have
no idea, And to be honest with you, I'm not
really interested because he's nobody.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
To me. He was.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
He was a bad person. I will say that he
found a way because he was a very correct, charismatic person.
I mean, look at what he did. You know, he
was able to get people to follow along with his ideas,
even as far as giving up their own life. That
(34:55):
is brings back stories of John Jones.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
David Kriesh, I was just about to say to you
and to our listeners as you're listening to this, what
you're saying is men of power take uneducated folks and
perturb a religion to make them extreme in order to
(35:26):
carry out acts that have nothing to do with faith
or religion but are more about geopolitical and social issues.
And if you have your hard time to get your
arms around that. As a Christian American, you need to
try to remember that right next to often times strung
(35:49):
up black Americans for the burning Christian cross yeah and
bibles that is not Christianity. Is a perturbing of a faith. Yeah.
(36:10):
And if you can't get your arms around that this
has happened among many fays and many cultures, then you'll
never understand that the people who subscribe to Islam that
flew the planes into the buildings and the Pentagon are
not with the vast majority of the people worshiping in
(36:31):
mosques think or believe absolutely, you know and it but
you hate Muslims. Well, I'm gonna let you get to
the rest of it here in a minute. But is
that a fair statement what I said? Absolutely, But you
(36:51):
didn't know that when you showed up and you asked
kron and you're going to prove to your daughter while
blowing these folks up is a good thing. And then
people started hugging you.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Yeah, I know that was not to mention being a veteran,
you know, I mean I hugged people anyway, you know,
which has got me into some trouble because in Islam
we're not to shake hands or to hug women, right
that are not related to us. So I was speaking
(37:27):
at a Holocaust museum in Chicago and Jesse Jackson's daughter
came there to see me, and she came up to
me and just reached out and give me a hug.
There was pictures taken that became a total social media
nightmare for me. Really, yes, because we call them the
(37:47):
halal police. Right, Halal means permissible, Haram means impermissible. Okay,
so what was happening was haram. We call them the
halal police because they'll come out, Oh, you.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Can't do that.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
You can't do that, brother, Oh what do you thinking?
What are you thinking?
Speaker 1 (38:03):
I'm like, oh, my gosh, man, the woman hugged me.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
The woman hugged me, and.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
By the way, and there's nothing behind us, so take
a pill.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Well I did feel that way, I really did. At first,
I became very defensive and I lasked out as some
of these people, and then one person calmly explained it
to me. He says, yes, of course, there was nothing
meant by what you were doing, nothing at all from
(38:34):
either person involved in that. But you're a public figure now,
people look up to you. Especially the young people. They
see stuff like that. It confuses them. Yes, was there
any harm done?
Speaker 1 (38:52):
No?
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Not really. My wife knew about it. She didn't care.
And that's the only one I'd care to be upset
about it, right, because she knows. But it's how it perceived, right,
And and so you know, that's a lot of times
when a woman comes towards me, you know, and I
know she's gonna ask to shake my hand, you know,
(39:13):
and it's it. I just put my hand up to
my chest. I think I did that out there, right, Yeah,
that's right, you didn't. You did.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
It's done as a means of respect, not disrespect. So
there's a matter of this bomb you made.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
So now you've found out these people in this mosque
or loving decent people, and you're not going to explode
them anymore. But le's they shows up at your apartment.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah, if I can, let me go back a little bit, Yeah,
to explain the whole concept of what you were thinking.
Because of the ignorance, right, surrounded by not only Muslims
with their own faith, but Christians also back in the
Middle A, right, a large part of christiendom was ignorant
they couldn't read and write, right, they were serfs and
(40:07):
they worked, and that's all they did. They didn't They're
the only people that could read and write were the priests,
and they were all families. And the Bible at that
time was in Latin anyway, So the priest told you
what the Bible said. They were the interpreters of the
Bible exactly, which is not any different than what a
(40:30):
minister or preacher is now is an interpreter of of
what it's saying, right to to give out to his
to his people, to this congregation, right, and and and
that's and that's good. It should be that that's what
the moms do, right, right, the good of moms. So
which I will get to. So we have crusades, we
have the heresy of the knights. Templars, right, nice templars,
(40:54):
didn't do anything wrong. French king and the pope at
the time got together. France was broke. Templars are controlling
all the land in the Middle East, in the area
of Jerusalem and surrounding areas. So oh, let's make them heretics,
and that way we just confiscate their property. So now
(41:15):
we're not broke, right, that's a true story that actually
happened Afghanistan. We had captured a or not we not me,
but the American forces there had captured a would be
suicide bomber. He was going to drive in a truck
full of explosives into the gate at Camp leather Neet,
(41:36):
which had been done anyway, eventually got done anyway, It's
not by him. So I sat in on this interrogation.
This guy, the guy who was doing it, was doing
the interrogation, was actually a Muslim. It was a marine
who had converted Islam, married a local girl, okay, and
he was all into it. Man. I used to tease
(41:58):
him all the time in a fun way, but really
I could have just like cut his throat right there.
That's the way I felt about him, right. But he
would keep this little knapsack and he'd have a Koran
in English and a Koran in Pashtun, which was what
his wife spoke, right, So he was he was constantly
looking at it, constantly looking through it and trying to learn.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Right.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
And so we get this guy in there. He's leaning
forward in a chair that's bolted to the ground with
chains that are also on these like hooks. The I
forget what they're calling.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
But you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
And they were in there his hands. Yeah, very very
uncomfortable position. And we're talking to him, and he threw interpreters.
He pipes up and he says, he says, if I
kill the infidel, I'm guaranteed Heaven right now. You hear
that statement a lot.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
What we think. I'm so glad you're doing this because
I was going to ask about it.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
And and this is where this is where going back
to nine at eleven, how this kind of ties in.
The interrogator at that time picked out in me says, really,
hold on a second, goes over to his knapsack, gets
the Koran out and pashtune, slides it across the table,
tells him through interpreters, if you can show me where
(43:20):
it is in that book that it says that, I'll
let you go. The dude sunk his head.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
And said, I can't read.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
I can't read. That's what the mom told us. So
there's a tie in there, okay. And and and that's
a huge part that still is is throughout Islam is
a large portion of our population throughout the world is ignorant.
They can't read. They can't write. And that's how you
(43:51):
get these guys who have agendas to tie in that.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Can indoctrinate the most needy and uneducated among them to
do their bidding for things that have nothing to do
with their religion.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Right now, it's it's the duty of all Muslims to
try to memorize the Koran, okay, even parts of it.
So I know they have memorized parts of the Quran,
but they don't have the educational background to even decipher
what they're what they're reciting. So it's it's like, you know,
(44:27):
it's I can read something, but if I don't know
what this word means, or I don't know how this
sentence structures. Yeah, you know, I don't. I don't know.
But all this guy's explaining it to me. He's a
respected person, you know. So there's so many similarities there,
especially from the early Church to Islam too, and and
(44:52):
and and I don't speak a lot about Judaism because
I really don't know that much about Judaism, but but
I'm sure there's a tie in there too.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
We'll be right back. You went in looking to kill
them all and ended up loving them all, and frankly
them loving you, but you still made a freaking bomb.
And we're playing around blowing these folks up. And at
(45:25):
some point, I know the FBI catches wind of the
pre mentality you.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Well, so here's how that happened. It had already happened,
you know, I mean, this conversion, this change of heart,
whatever you want to say. I had disposed of a bomb,
disposed of all the parts properly, then just throw them
in a dumpster. I got it, and it's went on
(45:53):
about my life. I now, nobody at this point even
knows what you're plans for. Anybody that knew me knew
I hated Muslims.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Yeah, no idea. They had no idea of your building.
You kept that under your hat, just me. Nobody else
got it until that. So, so I was.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
I was in college now because the VA, you know,
I'm part of the system now in the VA says, hey,
why why don't you go to cause I can't do
labor work. I would have loved to have been to welder,
but your back's shot, can't do it got blown up. Yeah,
so I have to do a behind a desk job now,
you know. So I have to go to college for
that because I'm I'm dumber in the box of rocks. Okay,
(46:35):
so I got to learn something, right. And so I'm
in I'm in class, and I'm forty somedd years old,
mid forties, and I'm so. I had a different relationship
with my professors than the twenty something students. We were
actually more friends.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
You know.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
I was sitting in an office drinking coffee with one
of my professors and I don't even know why. I
don't know what started the whole conversation, but I told her.
I told her the story.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
You're kidding me? No, you said, hey, you know what, Yeah,
I built a bomb and I was going to blow
these fools up. Now I'm one of them.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
How'd that go over?
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Yeah? Yeah. She was like, oh my gosh. And she
knew me on the outside through charity organizations stuff that
I had been a part of and start and done
stuff for and everything like that, so she knew I
was not just talking to be talking, right, And she goes,
oh my gosh, she goes, you have got to tell
(47:37):
that story that could change people's lives. I'm like, really,
I didn't think nothing of it, you know, it's something
that happened it's over whatever, you know, And she says,
what are you doing the rest of the days? Said, well,
when I finish this coffee, I was can go home
and go to sleep. I ain't got nothing else to do.
She goes, no, you got my next class tell that story.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
So I did.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Somebody in that class was shocked that here this guy
is saying that he made a bomb.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
An unbalanced former marine in our midst.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
And now he's a Muslim.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
Yo.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
No, he's making phone calls saying you got check his
dude out. And there there they come. And it was
funny because you know, a lot of times I and
I think this is a guy thing too, where we'll
say stuff and is like, as soon as it leaves
our mouth, we're trying to reach out and grab it back.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Yeah, Because they showed up, introduced themselves, and I was like,
what took you so long? That's what I said to him.
And as soon as I said that, I was like, dude,
oh man, And and so we talked. It started out
as a like a health and comfort kind of visit,
(48:58):
right to make sure I was.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
Okay waterboarding, but they were investigating.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
So we talked about it and I told him I said, yeah,
it's going So they said, well, do you mind if
we uh do an investigation for explosives here in the house.
And I said, At half hour later, I'm handcuffed in
the front lawn, bomb dogs going through my house and
then my wife and my daughter pull up.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
They didn't know anything. Even after the fact, they didn't
know about it. I didn't even tell them, and I
already told her a professor at school.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
You know, I tell you.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
So I'm like most husbands. I don't tell my wife nothing.
But but but it was, it was, you know, that
was that was the beginning at the end of that marriage.
Because there's people in FBI jackets, local police department, and
I'm in a I live in an apartment complex. It's
(49:49):
a big deal. Everybody's out.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
I read and they didn't find it, and they found
you to no longer be a threat and all of that.
What is astonishing to me is now you have to
tell these people that you've now joined in your house
of worship that yeah, I was gonna kill all y'all
(50:15):
and they invited you to dinner.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
Well, hospitality is big in the Islamic world, especially in
the postun culture, and Bib and her family are from
that culture. They're from Afghanistan, so hospitality is big.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
Hey.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
I used to make the joke, I said, because people
we would always when we were doing as you know,
those where you go around and do the premieres and
all that stuff, and people would ask about the food, right,
because Bbe is like, out of this world a cook.
I mean, she's oh my gosh. And I tell people,
I said, man, I used to wear one hundred and
ninety pounds before I went to her house. I'm two
(50:59):
fifty six, all right, And I said, yeah, don't even
drive by her house because you will look in your
every mirror and should be chasing you down with a plate.
That's the way she is, right, Oh, man, I love
her so much.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
But so.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
It was the fact that it was being talked about
because things were being heard because of course I started
talking about it, not telling them like I said. I
still I told that class. I'm not, like I said,
I'm still not that smart. I never graduated high school.
(51:36):
I have two degrees now, but I never graduated high
school and you would. And so it's proof that just
having a degree does not make you smart.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
They had heard about it, and it made a lot
of people uncomfortable, unbeknownst to me, and she she did.
This was not the first time she invited me to
her house, but now, yeah, she she had intentions.
Speaker 1 (51:57):
Now, well, no, I just wonder if in my church
there was a former Muslim who fought for the Iranian
Republican Guard who had formerly gone as far to build
a bomb and had plans to put it under our
sanctuary on Christmas Eve, who then converted and we found
(52:22):
all this out, if our first reaction would be, hey,
let's have him over to dinner to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
Yeah, I know, I know, Well that's what happened. Yeah,
that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Well, I mean, we need to check ourselves just a
little because to me, that is the ultimate in grace
and courage, because I gotta believe there were people in
her community going what Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:50):
Yeah, people still get they still get a laugh out
of that, regardless of whether they're in the community or not,
they still get a laugh out of it, because yeah,
it's like, are you serious? I wouldn't want that person
in my house, right.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
And she invited you to her home with her family
for dinner.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
And there was friends there too. There was other other
people from the community they were there also, and you know,
I was just talking to everybody, and you know, I
I guess looking back, I noticed it was an uncomfortable
feeling that was kind of in the air, I would assume,
but I did. It didn't really hit me much, you know,
because I mean, here, I'm I'm I'm one of you,
(53:31):
now right. You know, I didn't even didn't even give
it a much thought.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
I also read that one of your all right, in
a church, it's a prishoner. What do you call a
fellow islam worshiping person from your house of worship? What
do you call that person? Is there for that?
Speaker 2 (53:46):
It's his brother?
Speaker 1 (53:47):
Okay, brother or sister or sister. He's an African American
guy who's American, grew up in America, whose grandfather was
castro and hung in Munthsy, Indiana, who hated white people.
Who is now your brother? Oh yeah, How did he
(54:12):
take the news of the bomb?
Speaker 2 (54:13):
Well, he was just like everybody, I guess when they
did really, when they did find out, he.
Speaker 1 (54:21):
Was shocked, you know, even he for grieve.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
Yeah, yeah, I mean see, And that's that's the similarities
of what our faith stands for.
Speaker 1 (54:33):
We have to forgive.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
And there's even a psychological advantage to that, because nobody's
asking you to forget anything. But when you forgive, you
let everything go and and and that's the beauties of
our religion. If there's punishment to be dealt, it's not
by us, and it's not really even our concern mac.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
My faith teaches that not only do you have to
give others, you have to give yourselves. How you doing
with that?
Speaker 2 (55:06):
In large?
Speaker 1 (55:08):
I have?
Speaker 2 (55:10):
And the only reason I say that is because people
have come up to me and they have told me
that I have helped, I have answered questions, warned parts,
give people hope. I don't think I'm a big deal.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
I do not.
Speaker 2 (55:32):
I'm just a guy with a story. I really. I mean,
that's the way I look at myself, right, And and
it is very humbling at times, you know, But but
I always go back to one of one of my
favorite comments that I had ever received on my message.
And I won't tell you exactly what he said, because
it was it was it's the way I used to talk, right,
(55:55):
But but he was very he was very honest, and
he said, if a tough guy like you can change
the way he thinks about things. I guess I can too.
That's what it's all about.
Speaker 1 (56:05):
Well, that's the payoff, isn't it. That's it. We'll be
right back. I got a question. What do you feel
like you have to forgive yourself for? Because in the film,
(56:29):
the documentary, you talked about having a hard time at
first forgiving yourself and I found that to be odd
because you didn't blow the bomb up. So we're not
talking about the bomb, I assumed, and correct me if
I'm wrong. You're talking about the twenty five years in
the military. Absolutely, but make you were serving under orders
(56:59):
doing a really unsavory but unconvenient and uncomfortable truth that
we have to have people defending us or we won't
be able to have conversations like this because you can't
have this conversation a lot of countries in this world,
we have that liberty, and that liberty is precious and
(57:22):
it requires guys like you who did the work that
you did in the military to provide us with the
freedoms to explore and understand and grow from one another
like this. So what do you need to forgive yourself for?
Is it the fact that you killed people that worship
(57:42):
like you do. Now, it.
Speaker 2 (57:46):
Encompasses a lot of things. Really, it's the shame that
I got enjoyment out of it. So now I you know,
you had sayd something with which is really a very
prominent misunderstanding. Okay, is that you mentioned we were under orders.
(58:08):
That's part true because I rose up in rank, okay,
and the higher I got it basically a lot of
times became my call. We were given a task. You
go from here, you go here, and you make it safe.
(58:29):
That's the task.
Speaker 1 (58:30):
How is a different deal?
Speaker 2 (58:31):
How's a different deal?
Speaker 3 (58:35):
I do have.
Speaker 1 (58:38):
Issue with that and the fact that I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (58:46):
On the surface, I guess because I would come back
from operations that I would set and cry for a
while on my own, just go somewhere. I cry because
it was hard, you know. And the hardest thing was
(59:09):
even I mean, I understood the reason behind it, but
even the dead children.
Speaker 1 (59:17):
Man, you can't some things you cannot see.
Speaker 2 (59:22):
You just can't, man.
Speaker 1 (59:23):
And it.
Speaker 2 (59:27):
It'll haunt me for the rest of my days, man,
And I know God's forgiven me. You know, it's our thing.
Like the Baptism and Christianity, right, sins are worst away.
At that point you start over, right, we take shaht
it's decoration of faith, right, and we do that publicly.
(59:49):
Once we do that, sins are gone. At that point
start again. So I do feel in my heart that
God's forgiven me. And in the grand scheme of things,
does it really matter if I ever forgive myself or not? Not? Really,
God forgive me, That's all that matters.
Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
Right, But.
Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
Uh, it's just uh man, it's a hard thing.
Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
It And there's men and women all of our country
who served our country dutifully that are all still probably
dealing with a lot of that. And that is the
price they pay for our ability to have this chat today.
Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
Very true, very true. You know one in five homeless
people are veterans.
Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
Yeah, I know, yeah, I read that not too long ago.
That is shameful.
Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
That is shameful. And you know, as in on the
government speed we can send billions of dollars in military
aid to a country, but we come back here and
we sit down and go, yeah, all economic problems because
all the single moms on food stamps.
Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
What you are now married to a Christian woman, which
is hilarious. You are you have been the president of
your mosque twice, and you've taken the opportunity of your
story and a documentary that's an OSCAR nominated documentary. It's
(01:01:25):
only thirty minutes. You guys should watch it. That's had
over a million views. And now you have a social
work degree. Tell me what you're doing with your life now.
Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
Well. So I do have a degree in social work,
which means I'm broke. I was working as a life coach,
and when this film kicked off, and I was going
here and there for all the premieres and everything, I
decided to step down. I resigned from my position. And
(01:01:59):
because I want to focus on this message. And it's
not to say that this message is an end all,
it's not. It's a step. I don't look at myself
as somebody that's fascinating necessarily or I'm nobody special.
Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
I mean, my teachers just say that about me. But
I'm nobody special, right, And I just want people to
stop and think. So I travel and I meet with people,
not all of them like me. I've had death threats,
you know. I tell people, considering the first part of
(01:02:44):
my life was people trying to kill me. If that
all of a sudden stopped. I probably go through some
kind of separation anxiety.
Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
Right, So it's I'm.
Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
Good, I'm good. Keep it up, guys. But but so
I I just want people stop and think. You don't
have to agree with me. Some people are not going
to agree with me. Most people might not agree with me.
That's fine, but stop and think there may be other options.
I use the example of a hand.
Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
You have you lay your hand out, spread your fingers,
and this signifies differences in humanity, whether it's religion, race,
you know, uh, social culture, whatever, it doesn't matter. Right,
and it's a hand. It's a tool. You can do
a lot with a hand. Right, But when it comes
(01:03:35):
to having things that have to be done and it
has to be done the right way and you have
to stand firm, what do you do bring it all together?
Because this, my friends, is unbreakable, and until we can
get to this, it's not gonna work.
Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
Matt, your story is crazy. From a drug dealing and
using high school drop out to a twenty five year
veteran of our military who learned to hate Muslims, who
got blown up, who decided he was going to blow
(01:04:16):
up some Muslims and wanted to prove that that was
a good thing to do to the one thing he
loved on the face of the planet, which was his daughter,
And through trying to prove that, found love and faith
and forgiveness not only of himself but of everything, and
(01:04:40):
converted Islam and is now trying to use all of
that experience to get people to just listen to one another.
That's your life, bro.
Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
Yeah, I usually end my talks with Years ago, very
wise Man made a statement that will forever live in history.
He said, I have a dream, I have a plan,
and it starts with a smile and a conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
I love that. Mac. If somebody wants to meet you here,
you have them speak. How do they find Mac?
Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
I am all over social media?
Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
Give me some handle? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
Yeah, so I did start an LLC called From Hate
to Understanding. If you want to write an email, it's
from hate from hate to Understanding all one word at
gmail dot com that go straight to you, I go
straight to me. Yeah, I'm not I'm not that big.
I don't have people doing my paperwork stuff for me.
(01:05:44):
I don't read my emails. I do TikTok. I'm an
old guy, but it gets to the young people. And
that's this Richard mack McKinney on TikTok and Facebook, I
can't invite anybody to Facebook because I'm full.
Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
That's a limit? No more friends after five thousand?
Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
Yeah, Richard McKinney, everybody otherwise known as Mac brother, thanks
for coming to Memphis spend some time with me and
sharing your story and sharing it so openly. I have
really enjoyed being able to discuss some of the things
that I think people really wonder about. And I hope
we've challenged some people to maybe think about things differently, because,
(01:06:26):
as you know, I don't think the narratives coming out
of DC or the national media do anything but serve
to divide us. And I think when an army of
normal folks, regardless of how you worship, what you look like,
who you love, or what you believe, can come together
and have open, civil, non threatening conversations about the stuff
(01:06:49):
that we differ on, is how we can maybe close
that hand. One day and you're at the tip of
the sphere. You've been on a tip of the spear
of your whole life, and you're the tip of the
sphere of another fight. And I'll tell you I sleep
well at night knowing there were men like you on
the wall back when you were serving our country in
the military. And I sleep well at night knowing there's
(01:07:10):
men like you on the wall the tip of the
spear trying to close the frist. And I appreciate you
joining us fun, Thank you, thanks you being here, and
thank you for joining us this week. If Richard McKinney
or another guest has inspired you in general, or better yet,
(01:07:33):
inspired you to take action by bringing Richard to speak
to a group in your area or something else entirely,
please let me know. I'd love to hear about it.
You can write me anytime at Bill at normalfolks dot us.
I personally will respond. And if you enjoyed this episode,
share it with friends and on social subscribe to the podcast,
(01:07:55):
rate and review it. Please consider becoming a premium member
at normalfolks dot us. All these things that can help
us grow an army of normal folks guys. The more folks,
the more possibility we have to make an impact. For
premium members, we'll have bonus content from this episode, with
(01:08:17):
Mac telling the story of nominating his now friend BB,
a woman to be the head of their mosque, which
is revolutionary. If you don't want to miss it, become
a Premium Member today. I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you
next week.
Host
Bill Courtney
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