- American Jedi: The Salman Hamdani Story is a 38-minute documentary that will be screened at the University of Michigan.
- The hero, Mohammad Salman Hamdani is a Pakistani-American NYPD cadet
To bring people together, Toledo developer Nick Eyde and longtime friend Mohammad Khalil are telling the story of an American Muslim hero who lost his life trying to save lives at the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks.
The hero, Mohammad Salman Hamdani is a Pakistani-American NYPD cadet. The Star Wars-obsessed police cadet and EMT ran toward the Twin Towers to save lives on Sept. 11, 2001. Hamdani was recognized as a hero, Toledo Blade reported.
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“People need to hear the story, they need to know more about Salman and about what he believed and everything that he embodied,” Eyde said.
“To me, it was all the good things about America in one life that was tragically cut short.”
Wanting to take on an interfaith project, Eyde and Khalil thought about things that had changed America.
They started conducting interviews in 2016 with Hamdani’s family, friends, professors, and two Muslim survivors of the attacks.
American Jedi
Their effort resulted in American Jedi: The Salman Hamdani Story, a 38-minute documentary that will be screened at the University of Michigan at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Eyde, who has some experience with acting and producing short films, said he hopes audiences will get to know Hamdani as he did through the production process.
“I’m Lebanese, Christian, come from an immigrant background. To see and hear his story that talks so much about the joy and the love of being American and all that meant to him while still embracing his faith and being a part of so many different things that we can take for granted sometimes as Americans,” Eyde said.
“And then to see the way that he sacrificed himself to try to save other people on that day … it just strikes you pretty deep and gives you a lot of good feelings of hope.”
“Even though [our] faiths are different … I was inspired by his life, his sacrifice, the way that I was able to gather how he approached life and making the most of all that he was able to do in that short period of time that he was on the planet,” Eyde added.