Son of Hamas Leader Converts to Christianity and Moves to U.S.

15 Aug, 2008 by Sharon Soon

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This is an amazing story. You’re probably not going to hear it from the mainstream media (other than from Fox News, who did the interview), but it’s one that deserves to be heard. It’s the story of a man who not only was raised as a Muslim in the West Bank, but was the son of a powerful leader of Hamas, the militant Islamic group. Having questioned the principles of his religion since a child, Mosab Hassan Yousef as a young adult made a difficult, life-altering decision to give up the faith of his heritage and convert to Christianity, finding refuge in the United States. Here are a few excerpts from Yousef’s interview with Fox’s Jonathan Hunt. His insights are thought-provoking and the reasons he offers for his life-changing decision are compelling. Liberals and PC police beware: this may be too much for you to handle.

I believe that all those walls that Islam built for the last 1,400 years are not existing (sic) anymore. They don’t recognize this. They built those walls and made people ignorant because they’re afraid. They didn’t want people to discuss anything about the reality of Islam, about the big questions of Islam and they asked their followers, the Muslims, ‘Don’t ask about those certain questions.’

But now, people have media. If the father closes the door for his daughter not to leave the house, she’s going to go behind her computer and travel the world. So people easily can get information, knowledge, searching (sic) engines, so it’s very, very available for everybody to study about Islam, about other religions. Not from the Islam point of view, but from other points of view.

So for the next 25 years this is for sure going to make huge change in the Muslim and the Arab world.

It’s an encouraging thought that the newer generations of Muslims might change their views as they gain exposure to other ideas and belief systems outside of Islam. I once heard an Iraqi War veteran speak similarly about the U.S.’s future with Iraq; he believed, optimistically, that since the Iraqi youth has been exposed to “real” American people (our troops) and even had good relations with them, these children would not grow up seeing Americans the way their parents did. He even went as far as to say that in another generation, we might even find ourselves a great ally in Iraq.

There are two facts that Muslims don’t understand … I’d say about more than 95 percent of Muslims don’t understand their own religion. It came with a much stronger language than the language that they speak so they don’t understand it … they rely only on religious people to get their knowledge about this religion.

Second, they don’t understand anything about other religions. Christian communities live between Muslims and they’re minority and they (would) rather not to go speak out and tell people about Jesus because it’s dangerous for them.

I think Yousef hits on a key point here when he talks about the understanding of beliefs and religion. Inherent within this notion is that not all religions are true or equal or right, as liberals generally would have us all believe. But this can only be understood through education about what each religion truly stands for. No matter what you believe, education and understanding should never, never be seen as bad or dangerous.

Now, here’s the reality: after I studied Christianity — which I had a big misunderstanding about, because I studied about Christianity from Islam, which is, there is nothing true about Christianity when you study it from Islam, and that was the only source.

When I studied the Bible carefully verse by verse, I made sure that that was the book of God, the word of God for sure, so I started to see things in a different way, which was difficult for me, to say Islam is wrong…

So definitely I started to figure out the problem is Islam, not the Muslims and those people — I can’t hate them because God loved them from the beginning. And God doesn’t create junk. God created good people that he loved, but they’re sick, they have the wrong idea. I don’t hate those people anymore but I feel very sorry for them and the only way for them to be changed (is) by knowing the word of God and the real way to him…

The problem is not Hamas, the problem is not people. The root of the problem is Islam itself as an idea, as an idea. And about Hamas as an organization, of course, the Hamas leadership, including my father, they’re responsible; they’re responsible for all the violence that happened from the organization.

To me, Yousef’s life represents an ideal of how all humans should live: seeking to find real understanding by being open, by gaining knowledge, and by viewing others with compassion and empathy rather than hatred and spite. He has discovered where his beliefs lie and stands firm on this, despite the dangerous consequences he faces everyday simply because he has spoken out. While he has many reasons to resent his past, he instead feels “very sorry” for other Muslims and believes that many of them – even those who belong to Hamas – are still good people who have been misguided.

I very much believe that conservatives – real conservatives, at least – have a great deal in common with someone like Yousef. Like any other belief system, conservatism, can and should be discovered as the correct, logical, and moral ideology when any individual honestly seeks answers and understanding. While liberals tout their own “religion” of relativism, tolerance, and political correctness, the truth is that in the end, there are right beliefs and wrong beliefs. And real conservatives know what this means.

I’d be willing to bet a pretty penny that Yousef is a conservative himself.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!