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Top Hamas leader’s son converts to Christianityby Ethan Cole, Christian Post
Posted: Tuesday, August 5, 2008, 9:22 (BST)
The son of a top Hamas leader has converted to Christianity and prays some day his family will also accept Jesus Christ as their saviour, according to an Israeli newspaper. Masab Yousef, son of West Bank Hamas leader Sheik Hassan Yousef, revealed for the first time in an exclusive interview with Haaretz newspaper that he has left Islam and is now a Christian. Prior to the interview’s publication last Thursday, Yousef’s family did not know of his faith conversion even though he is in regular contact with them. “[T]his interview will open many people's eyes, it will shake Islam from the roots, and I'm not exaggerating,” said Yousef, who now resides in the United States. “What other case do you know where a son of a Hamas leader, who was raised on the tenets of extremist Islam, comes out against it?” Yousef, who is now 30-years-old, was first exposed to Christianity eight years ago while in Jerusalem, where out of curiosity he accepted an invitation to hear about Christianity. Afterwards, he became “enthusiastic” about what he heard and would secretly read the Bible every day. “A verse like ‘Love thine enemy’ had a great influence on me,” Yousef recalled. “At this stage I was still a Muslim and I thought that I would remain one. But every day I saw the terrible things done in the name of religion by those who considered themselves ‘great believers’. “I studied Islam more thoroughly and found no answers there. I re-examined the Koran and the principals of the faith and found how it is mistaken and misleading.” But with Christianity, Yousef said he could understand God as revealed through Jesus Christ. He said he could talk about God and Jesus for days, but Muslims are not able to say anything about God. “I consider Islam a big lie,” said Yousef. “The people who supposedly represent the religion admired Mohammed more than God, killed innocent people in the name of Islam, beat their wives and don’t have any idea what God is. “I have no doubt that they’ll go to hell. I have a message for them: There is only one way to paradise – the way of Jesus who sacrificed himself on the cross for all of us.” Four years ago, Yousef decided to convert to Christianity but did not let his family know. He still helped his father with his political activities, and his father only knew his son had Christian friends. “I felt responsible. It was better for me to be there rather than a gang of fools who would poison his mind,” Yousef explained. “I tried to understand those people, their thoughts, in order to change them from inside by means of a strong person like my father, who admitted to me in the past that he does not support suicide attacks.” Yousef described his father as a moderate Hamas leader. But even before his encounter with Christianity, Yousef had already become disenchanted with Hamas and Islam after being imprisoned at the age of 18 years old for heading a youth Islamic movement at his high school. He described the Hamas leaders he met in prison as people with “no morals” and “no integrity”, although they hide their corruption better than Fatah party members. “Nobody knows them and how they operate as well as I do,” Yousef said, recalling how the family of Hamas members killed by Israel were forced to beg for financial assistance while the leadership “abandoned” them and “wasted” tens of thousands of dollars a month only on security for themselves. “Then (in prison) I understood that not everyone in Hamas is like my father. He's a nice, friendly man. But I discovered how evil his colleagues are,” Yousef said. “After my release I lost the faith I had in those who ostensibly represented Islam." Hamas is considered a terrorist group by the United States, Israel, and many Western countries. The group has publicly vowed to destroy Israel. Now Yousef, the eldest son of Sheikh Yousef, says he “admires” Israel. "You Jews should be aware: You will never, but never have peace with Hamas,” Yousef stated. “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." He denounced the “entire” Palestinian society as one that “sanctifies death and the suicide terrorist. “In Palestinian culture a suicide terrorist becomes a hero, a martyr. Sheiks tell their students about the ‘heroism of the shaheeds (martyr)'.” Yousef highlighted that Hamas was the first to use suicide bombers as weapons against civilians. "They (Hamas) are blind and ignorant. It's true, there are good and bad people everywhere, but Hamas supporters don't understand that they are led by a wicked and cruel group that brainwashes the children and gets them to believe that if they carry out a suicide attack they'll get to paradise,” he said. The Muslim-turned-Christian says he does not think Islam will survive for more than 25 years because the truth about Islam will be exposed given the mass communication available in the modern age. For his part, Yousef says he hopes to “open the eyes” of Muslims and “reveal the truth” to them about Islam and Christianity with the goal to “take them out of the darkness and the prison of Islam”. “In that way they'll have an opportunity to correct their mistakes, to become better people and to bring a chance for peace in the Middle East,” he said. Yousef, who has taken the biblical name of Joseph, said he dreams of one day becoming a writer to tell his personal story and about the Middle East conflicts. “But at the moment, at least, my ambitions are only to find work, a place to live,” admits Yousef, who left behind properties in Ramallah to find true freedom. “I have no money, I have no apartment. “I was about to become one of those homeless people [in the United States],” he confessed, “but people from the church are helping me. I'm dependent on them." He also dreams that some day he can return to his homeland and his family will accept Jesus Christ. "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,” Yousef said. “Maybe one day I'll be able to return to Palestine and to Ramallah with Jesus, in the Kingdom of God.” |
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| Turkey is 7th most terror hit country in the world |
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Seventy-one separate terrorists incidents, which killed 38 people and injured 88 others, put the Turkey on the seventh place of the most-hit countries in the second quarter of 2008, the article titled "General Overview of the Terrorist Activities (April-June 2008)", said. "The main suspect of these terrorist incidents was PKK/KONGRA-GEL terrorists. The most volatile city in this period was Sirnak in southeastern Turkey. Seventeen separate terrorist incidents killed 9 people and wounded 18 others in the city," it said. According to the article, 2,396 terrorist incidents occurred worldwide in the period. A total 4,204 people were killed and 7,614 were injured in these incidents. Iraq topped the list of the most-hit countries with 857 separate attacks in which 1,575 people were killed and 3,247 others were injured. Thirty-five percent of total attacks in the world, 37 percent of total fatalities and 42 percent of total casualties sustained worldwide were recorded in Iraq, it added. First ten countries most hit by terrorism in the second quarter of the year are as follows: From: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/domestic/9556485.asp?gid=244&sz=3371 (Dated July 31, 2008) |
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THE BIG (UNTOLD) STORY IN THE MIDDLE EAST "I will build my church," Jesus said, "and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
(Matthew 16:18)
Sheikh Ahmad al Qataani, a leading Saudi cleric, appeared on a live interview on Aljazeera satellite television to confirm that, sure enough, Muslims were turning to Jesus in alarming numbers. "In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity," Al Qataani warned. "Every day, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Every year, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity." Stunned, the interviewer interrupted the cleric. "Hold on! Let me clarify. Do we have six million converting from Islam to Christianity?" Al Qataani repeated his assertion. "Every year," the cleric confirmed, adding, "a tragedy has happened."
The God of the Bible is moving powerfully in the Middle East to draw men, women and children to His heart and adopt them into His family in record numbers. More Muslims have come to faith in Jesus Christ over the last thirty years -- and specifically over the last seven to ten years -- than at any other time in human history. There is a revival going on among the ancient Catholic, Coptic, and Chaldean churches. Today, the Church is being truly resurrected in the lands of its birth.
Consider the latest evidence:
* AFGHANISTAN -- In Afghanistan, for example, there were only 17 known evangelical Christians in the country before al-Qaeda attacked the United States. Today, there are well over 10,000 Afghan followers of Christ and the number is growing steadily. Church leaders say Afghan Muslims are open to hearing the gospel message like never before. Dozens of baptisms occur every week. People are snatching up Bibles and other Christian books as fast as they can be printed or brought into the country. The Jesus film, a two hour docudrama on the life of Christ based on the Gospel of Luke, was even shown on television in one city before police shut down the entire TV station."God is moving so fast in Afghanistan, we're just trying to keep up," one Afghan Christian worker told me, requesting anonymity. "The greatest need now is leadership development. We need to train pastors to care for all these new believers."
* UZBEKISTAN -- There were no known Muslim converts to Christ there in 1990. Now there are more than 30,000.
* IRAQ -- As I shared on Fox Friends on Easter morning, in Iraq, there were only a handful of Muslim converts to Christianity back in 1979 when Saddam Hussein took full control of that country. Yet today, there are more than 70,000 Iraqi Muslim background believers in Jesus (MBBs), approximately 50,000 who came to Christ as refugees in Jordan after the first Gulf War in 1990-91, and another 20,000 who have come to Christ since the fall of Saddam Hussein. John Moser, the executive director of The Joshua Fund, and I just returned from nine days traveling through five provinces in Iraq. We met with 19 Iraqi evangelical Christian leaders. I had the privilege of preaching in a church of more than 100 MBBs from Baghdad -- a church that didn't even exist in 2002 before liberation. We also had the privilege of meeting and interviewing numerous former Islamic jihadist terrorist who have come to Christ and are now pastors and church planters.
* KAZAKHSTAN -- In Kazakhstan, there were only three known evangelical Christian believers before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Today there are more than 15,000 Kazakh Christians, and more than 100,000 Christians of all ethnicities.
* EGYPT -- More than 1 million Egyptians have trusted Christ over the past decade or so, report Egyptian church leaders. The Egyptian Bible Society told me they used to sell about 3,000 copies of the Jesus film a year in the early 1990s. But in 2005 they sold 600,000 copies, plus 750,000 copies of the Bible on tape (in Arabic) and about a half million copies of the Arabic New Testament. "Egyptians are increasingly hungry for God's Word," an Egyptian Christian leader told me. Last Christmas, I had the privilege of visiting the largest Christian congregation in the Middle East, which meets in an enormous cave on the outskirts of Cairo. Some 10,000 believers worship there every weekend. A prayer conference the church held in May 2005 drew some 20,000 believers.
* IRAN -- In 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini led the Islamic Revolution, there were only about 500 known Muslim converts to Christianity. Today, interviews with two dozen Iranian pastors and church leaders reveals that there are well over 1 million Shia Muslim converts to Christianity.
* SUDAN -- Despite a ferocious civil war, genocide and widespread religious persecution, particularly in the Darfur region -- or perhaps because of such tragedies -- church leaders there tell me that more than 1 million Sudanese have made decisions to follow Jesus Christ just since 2001. Since the early 1990s, more than 5 million Sudanese have become followers of Jesus. Seminary classes to train desperately-needed new pastors are held mountain caves. Hundreds of churches have been planted, and thousands of small group Bible studies are being held in secret throughout the country.
Is life easy for these Muslim converts? By no means. They face ostracism from their families. They face persecution from their communities. They face being fired by their employers. They face imprisonment by their governments. They face torture and even death at the hands of Muslim extremists. But they are coming to Christ anyway. They are becoming convinced that Jesus is, in fact, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that no one comes to the Father in heaven except through faith in Jesus' death on the cross and powerful resurrection from the dead.