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At the risk of death, Mosab Hassan Yousef chose Christ and His message of love, forgiveness, and salvation over the vengeful, brutal, conquering ideology that is Islamic jihad.
One of the most widespread lies of our modern age is that “Islam is a religion of peace.”
It is not. And it has never been.
With the postmodern turn of the 20th century, all “religions” began to be treated the same. Scholars and intellectuals began speaking about Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc., as if they were all just various expressions of a form of generic theism. “Tolerance” meant that real distinctions between these world religions had to be downplayed. The “essence” of all religions, after all, is simply “love” and “faith,” right?
Wrong.
There are major differences between each of these three (and many others), and to speak of them in the same breath as if they all contain largely similar truth claims about humanity and our relation to God, or as if the doctrines taught and advanced by their leading theologians are largely similar, is woefully mistaken.
If this were the case — that there is no real difference between Christianity and Islam — how could one explain the prominent conversion of Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a founding Hamas leader and a former Muslim?
Mosab is the son of Hassan Yousef, who co-founded Hamas, the Sunni Islamist political and military organization governing the Gaza Strip of the Palestinian territories. Hamas is an incredibly violent group, which frequently uses suicide bombings and deadly militaristic attacks on their Israeli neighbors. Hamas has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States since 1997.
And it was into this religion of violence that Mosab was born and raised. But God, in His kindness, saved Mosab. As a young boy, he began to follow in the footsteps of his father, joining in the violence that is intrinsic to the Jihad taught by Islam. He even participated in attacks on Israelis.
But according to his biography on Wikipedia,
“Yousef met a British missionary in 1999 who introduced him to Christianity. Between the years 1999 and 2000, Yousef gradually embraced Christianity. In 2005, he was secretly baptized in Tel Aviv by an unidentified Christian tourist. He left the West Bank for the United States in 2007, and lived some time in San Diego, California, where he joined the Barabbas Road Church. In August 2008, Yousef publicly revealed his Christianity, and renounced Hamas and the Arab leadership.”
Since then, Mosab has been a leading voice speaking out against the savagery and evils of Islamic terror and violence.
Mosab’s reemergence into the news comes, of course, as Hamas-led Palestinian troops invaded Israel two weeks ago, carrying out a “massacre on Israeli border communities, murdering and dismembering civilians, including children, and taking hostages.”
He is now speaking to the reality of how Palestinians and their Hamas leaders view and treat human life on both sides of the Gaza Strip. As Charlie Kirk noted in an October 19 post on X, Mosab “denounced Hamas and converted to Christianity after witnessing their savagery: ‘They don’t care for the Palestinian people. They don’t regard human life. I saw their brutality firsthand…. If they succeed in destroying Israel and building their state, what will they do? They will kill our people.’”
This statement from Mosab was part of a longer interview he conducted on FOX & Friends, in which he spoke at more length about the violence he witnessed firsthand and how that led him to renounce Islam and Hamas. Mosab explained,
“I was born at the heart of Hamas leadership… and I know them very well…I saw their brutality firsthand back in 1996 when I spent about a year and a half in Megiddo Prison… They killed so many Palestinian people at that point, and this is when I decided that I cannot be together with this movement.
I had to be honest with myself. Even though Hamas gave me advantages…. I was like a prince in that world… but I did not like them…I turned against even my own blood… because this is how much I did not like Hamas, and today, 25 years later, they are the rulers of Gaza, and we see what they are capable of doing.”
The conversion of Mosab, and the new wave of violence from Hamas, underscore this basic truth that has been lost in the lie of our modern talking points about world religions: Islam, with its teaching of Jihad, is not a religion of peace. It is a violent, conquering ideology wrapped in theocratic packaging.
In her 2015 article for Foreign Policy, “Islam Is a Religion of Violence,” Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, explained:
“Anyone seeking support for armed jihad in the name of Allah will find ample support in the passages in the Quran and Hadith that relate to Mohammed’s Medina period. For example, Q4:95 states, ‘Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home).’ Q8:60 advises Muslims ‘to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know.’ Finally, Q9:29 instructs Muslims: ‘Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.’”
Our silly secular experiment has blinded many to these truths. But those who can see this clearly, like Mosab, reject it. And for Mosab, in his rejection, he found Christ.
In a 2008 interview with the Wall Street Journal, he explained:
“I converted to Christianity because I was convinced by Jesus Christ as a character, as a personality. I loved him, his wisdom, his love, his unconditional love. I didn’t leave [the Islamic] religion to put myself in another box of religion. At the same time, it’s a beautiful thing to see my God exist in my life and see the change in my life.
I see that when he does exist in other Middle Easterners there will be a change. I’m not trying to convert the entire nation of Israel and the entire nation of Palestine to Christianity. But at least if you can educate them about the ideology of love, the ideology of forgiveness, the ideology of grace. Those principles are great regardless, but we can’t deny they came from Christianity as well.”
Now, 13 years later, Mosab continues to speak out against the violent nature of Islam and the horrifying attacks perpetrated by Hamas in the name of their false God, Allah, and his false prophet, Muhammad.
Perhaps his courageous example will inspire others to do the same — to stop talking about Islam as if it’s a “religion of peace” when its teaching and the violence it inspires so clearly show otherwise.
NOTE: From a biblical perspective, it is important to point out that Mosab does not accurately describe Christianity when he tries to argue that it’s not a “religion.” Yes, Christianity emphasizes a personal relationship with God, through Jesus Christ, but it is still a religion — it is the one true religion. The command to repent and believe in the Gospel message carries with it the command to learn and obey all that God has commanded us (Matthew 28:16-20). The fact that Mosab was willing to leave behind his former life, and his family, is a good example of what true conversion can and should look like. Given that, and his own testimony, one can have optimism that he has indeed truly been saved — but when evaluating how he talks about Christianity, it is clear that he still needs more and better discipleship in the faith.
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