Conversion to and from Islam: A Study in Contrasts

Avi Issacharoff reports in Haaretz (here and here): the son of the Hamas MP who is the most popular figure in that extremist Islamic organization, a young man who assisted his father for years in his political activities, has become a rank-and-file Christian. "I'm now called Joseph," he says at the outset.

Masab, son of Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef, had this to say to the reporter in an arranged meeting in California, where Masab / Yousef now lives:

"I know that I'm endangering my life and am even liable to lose my father, but I hope that he'll understand this and that God will give him and my family patience and willingness to open their eyes to Jesus and to Christianity. Maybe one day I'll be able to return to Palestine and to Ramallah with Jesus, in the Kingdom of God."

Masab / Yousef harbors no illusions about the milieu from which he came:

"You Jews should be aware: You will never, but never have peace with Hamas. Islam, as the ideology that guides them, will not allow them to achieve a peace agreement with the Jews. They believe that tradition says that the Prophet Mohammed fought against the Jews and that therefore they must continue to fight them to the death."

“Is that the justification for the suicide attacks?” asks the reporter. The young man responds:

"More than that. An entire society sanctifies death and the suicide terrorists. In Palestinian culture a suicide terrorist becomes a hero, a martyr. Sheikhs tell their students about the 'heroism of the shaheeds.'"

Compare that news report with another, that of the kidnapping and forced conversion to Islam of a prominent Christian woman and professor at the Palestine University in Gaza, Sana al-Sayegh, by Hamas. A study in contrasts, but also, a terrible sameness in terms of Hamas.

I don’t care what anyone says. Hamas as an organization appears to be as close to being an unmitigated evil as is humanly possible. I pray for its demise.

For some cautionary remarks on the reporter’s method, see Mark Stricherz here.

 

Comments

[Justin (koavf)]

Similarly:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0904/p07s01-wome.html

Hamas is a thoroughly evil movement and, unfortunately for Palestinians and Muslims, a thoroughly Palestinian and Muslim one as well.

-JAK

[JohnFH]

Justin,

I notice that your link works fine w/o any html added. Maybe that's because the link fits on one line. I point that out because others have been complaining that typepad comment as currently configured (not by me) is difficult to put links in.

[Justin Anthony Knapp]

John,

I posted the naked URL because I am simply ignorant about TypePad. I really should have just used HTML instead.

*Sometimes* if you paste in a long URL, it will be broken between two lines, like in this totally fake example:

http://example.com/directory/subdirectory/subsubdirectory/files/file/file.html?query

If there is a linebreak in the middle, *sometimes* software doesn't know what to do with these broken URLs and just displays them as text instead of turning them into hypertext links. Other software is smart enough to figure it out; it looks like TypePad is not that smart when it comes to converting URLs.

I have no idea how much you understand about HTML, so pardon me if I'm pedantic. If you want to make a link within a comment, all you have to do is this:

(a href="http://google.com/")TEXT HERE(/a)

Except replace the parenthesis - () - with greater-than/less-than marks - <>. Here is that same example but with parentheses replaced:

TEXT HERE

The "href" is the URL you want the user to access and the "TEXT HERE" is the text that you want to display for that link.

If you ever want some assistance with HTML or web design, I can help you. As memory serves, you have a son who is knowledgeable about these things, but I can be your Plan B.

-JAK

[Justin Anthony Knapp]

That is really weird: I previewed it and it showed up exactly how I wanted. I posted it and it got all garbled into nonsense. I frankly have no idea how TypePad handles HTML in comments now.

C'est la vie.

-JAK

[JohnFH]

Justin,

Thanks for trying. I'll see what the Typepad people have to say.