Hamas Leader’s Son Converted to Christianity

In light of current events, I am reposting here a report I posted some months ago:

The Islamic world has been shaken to its core.  A founding member of the Islamic military terrorist group Hamas has learned that his son has commited his life to Christianity.  An abridged version of the very long article:

Mosab Hassan Yousef, 30, said that his decision to abandon his Muslim faith and denounce his father’s organization had exposed his family to persecution in his home town of Ramallah and endangered his own life.

“I’m not afraid of them, especially as I know that I’m doing the right thing, and I don’t see them as my enemies,” he said. “I do think about this a lot. But what are they going to do? Are they going to kill me?  If they want to kill me, let them do it. I’m not going to stop anyone. It’s going to be my freedom”

Mr Yousef, who is known as Joseph by friends at the Barabbas Road church in San Diego, California, arrived in America 18 months ago but only recently made “the biggest decision of my life” to go public with his conversion to draw attention to how the Palestinian leadership is “misleading” and exploiting its people.

“Palestinians look really ugly in front of everybody in the world and they are very, very good people … they are misled, and their picture is very dark because of this leadership.  They need some help, they need people to stop lying to them, and lying to the world.”

Mr Yousef was raised as a Muslim by his politically powerful family. His father, Hassan Yousef, a highly respected sheikh born in the West Bank town of al-Ghaniya near Ramallah, is a founding member of Hamas, whose military wing has instigated dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks against Israel since it was formed in 1987.

Mr Yousef said that the decision to leave the home he loves and his family including five brothers and two sisters had made life hard for them.  “They are definitely suffering because of what I’ve done,” he said. “They are not a regular family, they are a very famous family, and Muslims around the world praise my family, praise my father. So when I came with a step like this, it was impossible to think about, it was crazy.”

Mr Yousef said that his father, who has spent more than a decade in Israeli jails for his involvement with Hamas, was in prison when he “got the worst news in his life” – that his son had become a Christian and left Ramallah. “But at the same time he sent me a message of love.

“Everybody is asking him to disown me. You understand if he disowns me he will give terrorists a chance to kill me.”

Mr Yousef said that his doubts about Islam and Hamas crystallised when he realised not all Hamas leaders were like his father, a moderate who he describes as “open-minded, very humble and honest”.  Mr Yousef said that he was appalled by the brutality of the movement, including the suicide bombers seeking glory through jihad.

“Hamas, they are using civilians’ lives, they are using children, they are using the suffering of people every day to achieve their goals. And this is what I hate,” he said.

It was after a chance encounter nine years ago with a British missionary that Mr Yousef began exploring Christianity.  He found it “exciting”, he said, and began secretly studying the Bible, struck by the central tenet “love your enemies”.

He hopes that Muslims will begin to question their religion and “fix it” by rejecting the parts that call for “killing others, cutting hands, cutting legs, torturing people and asking for destruction of entire civilisations”.

He said that after he converted to Christianity, he decided he had to escape and “live my life away from violence because I couldn’t coexist with that situation as a Christian.”

“I was thinking, what is my responsibility now? To see people dying every day or to stand up and say, this is wrong, this is right and be strong about this? So I had to make this move.”

“I didn’t come to Christianity for money, I came to Christianity because this is the way we can live a better life,” he said.

“I love my people. They have the right to live like any other nation on Earth. But at the same time, I want to help them [get] on the right track.”

Originally posted August 25, 2008