© 2024 Blaze Media LLC. All rights reserved.
Riaz Patel's powerful insight on 9/11: It 'changed the way I look at the world

Riaz Patel's powerful insight on 9/11: It 'changed the way I look at the world

Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001?

Riaz Patel, a two-time Emmy nominated TV executive producer at Axial Entertainment, was just a few blocks away with a direct view of the World Trade Center. Like so many of us, Riaz experienced shock, horror, and grief in the aftermath of that catastrophic day, but as a Pakistani-American and a Muslim, he also experienced different, isolating kind of fear.

Riaz joined Glenn on Tuesday's episode of “The Glenn Beck Radio Program” to share his first-hand experience of Sept. 11, 2001, and the days after.

Riaz described the incomprehensible feeling of watching the Twin Towers fall.

"I took three or four steps back because of what I was seeing, the largest buildings in Manhattan — one of them wasn't there," he said. "And then I watched the second one come down ... a building that you get out of a subway and you look for the Twin Towers so you know if you're looking south or north, it's your compass in Manhattan. It was gone."

Asked by Glenn about his experiences in the following days, Riaz recounted the moment he saw the rage become redirected toward him.

"The next day, Sept. 12, I was standing in line ... to donate blood," he said. "At some point the line started watching me, and I remember the line turning on me. I was with two friends, and this guy said to me, 'We should kill you and your family for what you did.' If my friends had not been standing there with me, I don't think they would have ever believed it would have happened in Manhattan.

"I think it was so primal," he continued. "It was war. It was life. It was death. And it was just a very strange thing to have the rage directed at you. It changed my life. It changed the way I see when people are angry and upset. It's not about me, it's about something else. ... That sort of changed the way I look at the world."

Watch the clip at the top of the page to get more of the conversation.

Find Riaz at Axial Entertainment.

To see more from Glenn, visit “The Glenn Beck Radio Program” or listen live on TheBlaze weekdays 9 a.m.–noon ET. Subscribers can tune-in anytime on-demand at TheBlaze TV. Not a subscriber? Sign up for a FREE trial here.

Want more Glenn? Check him out on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Want to leave a tip?

We answer to you. Help keep our content free of advertisers and big tech censorship by leaving a tip today.
Want to join the conversation?
Already a subscriber?