"His moment of truth"

By Jo Ciavaglia, Bucks County Courier Times, August 8, 2010:

Zak Ebrahim lost his father at age 7. Dad died of a heart attack, he told people.

A dead parent is easier to explain than one who is a Muslim extremist and a convicted murderer serving a life sentence in a super-max federal prison.

For most of his life, Ebrahim feared that people would find out about the father he barely knows.

Now, the Doylestown resident is telling the world who he is - and who he is not.

Who he is not, he said, is his father, El-Sayyid Nosair, who was convicted in 1995 as a co-conspirator in the first attack on the World Trade Center in New York City that killed six people.

Ebrahim, 27, recently has gone public with his twisted family ties, speaking out at events, such as today's Sunday celebration at the Pebble Hill Interfaith Church in Doylestown Township. He said his childhood experiences cemented a belief that hate and violence make things only worse.

His life story offers a rare glimpse into the life of an American family after one member is accused or convicted of terrorist acts - and, according to a national Muslim spokesman, the social ostracism they often encounter in the Muslim and Western communities. . . .