From Hamas to America

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Mosab Hassan Yousef is a former Muslim terrorist turned Israeli spy turned putative Christian and bestselling author turned yogi. His father is Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a co-founder of Hamas. Yousef père fathered nine children. Mosab, as the sheikh’s oldest son, was his heir apparent. Instead, Mosab is one of Hamas’ harshest critics, including in his new book, From Hamas to America.

In 2019, another of Yousef’s sons also denounced Hamas. Suheib Hassan Yousef described Hamas as a corrupt and “racist terror organization that is dangerous for the Palestinian people.” In an interview with Israeli TV, the youngest son of Sheikh Yousef said, “Hamas leaders [in Turkey] live in fancy hotels and luxury towers, their kids learn at private schools, and they are very well paid by Hamas. They get between four and five thousand dollars a month, they have guards, swimming pools, country clubs … They eat in the best restaurants, in places where one course cost $200. A family in Gaza lives on $100 per month … My main motivation is to help the Palestinian people by exposing the true face of Hamas.”

Suheib accused Hamas of taking money from Iran and using that money not to improve the lives of Arabs, but to sow discord not just between Arabs and Jews, but between various Arab factions. With Iranian money, Hamas, he said, encourages children to die for nothing. Even though both Suheib and his older brother Mosab denounce Hamas, Suheib condemns Mosab because Mosab cooperated with Israelis, which Suheib regards as “betrayal.”

Mosab Hassan Yousef was born in Ramallah in 1978. His father was “the man I most admire in the world.” As a boy, he joined others in throwing rocks at Israelis. As a young man, he was arrested while attempting to murder Israelis. As happened with other prisoners, he was offered the chance to provide Israelis with information. He accepted, thinking that he would gain power by pretending to be an asset. He would use that power, he was convinced, to contribute to Israel’s destruction.

Yousef details what happened next in his 2010 book, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices. That bestseller was cowritten with Ron Brackin and published by Tyndale, a Christian press. As he describes in that book, Yousef’s plan crumbled after he saw the true face of Hamas in prison. He was assigned the job of recording confessions of Arabs accused of collaboration with Israelis. He witnessed Hamas members torture their own fellow Arabs. The ostensible goal of this torture was to force confessions. To escape torture, inmates confessed to invented pornographic acts that included cows, cameras, and every woman in their village.

The Hamas torturers focused on men who did not have outside protectors. One victim, Akel, was targeted because his only relative was his sister. Too, Akel was a “simple farmer” “never accepted by the urban Hamas.” Hamas shoved needles under Akel’s fingernails. Another torture method was pressing burning plastic into the skin. Once Yousef witnessed Hamas torturing an alleged collaborator outside of prison. They beat him, shot him, and while he was still alive, dragged him from a moving truck. A recent New Yorker article describes Yahya Sinwar dripping boiling water on those suspected of collaboration, chopping off heads, and burying one man alive.

A prisoner threw himself against razor wire. The man explained to a guard that he was not trying to escape prison, but, rather, Hamas inmates. Yousef would learn from Israeli intelligence that none of these tortured men were actually collaborators. Horrified, Yousef agreed to work with Shin Bet. His goal in this cooperation was to protect human life. He thwarted, he says, many suicide bombings. He also kept his terrorist father safe.

I’ve been a Mosab Hassan Yousef fan girl since publication of Son of Hamas. New Jersey is home to one of America’s largest Muslim populations, both in terms of percent and raw numbers. I’ve taught and socialized with Muslims in New Jersey and in California, and also overseas, most significantly in the Central African Republic. When I was a school girl in New Jersey, a Muslim friend, who was a shy, gentle beauty, told me, “When the time for jihad comes, if you don’t convert, I’ll have to kill you.”

In the Central African Republic, it was impossible, even in the sparsely populated, remote village where I taught, to miss the deadly tension between the majority population, who were Christian and animist, and the minority Muslims. In 2013, those tensions ignited. The Muslim minority ran wild, killing, raping, and looting. Christians began retaliatory killings of Muslims.

The tensions I witnessed in C.A.R. between Muslims and non-Muslims and also among various Muslim groups occur across Africa. Tens of thousands die annually; hundreds of thousands are refugees; millions are internally displaced; see here.

I taught Muslim students in New Jersey and California, both mixed classes consisting of students from North Africa, including Algeria, Libya, and Egypt, and the Middle East across to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and also classes consisting exclusively of Malaysian exchange students. I was teaching adults, and many students became friends. I was invited to weddings and other social occasions, and my students visited my home.

Many of these students were hard-working and congenial. In each population, no matter the student’s country of origin, and in no matter what US state, I encountered the same attitudes. No, not every Muslim student expressed the following thoughts to me, but some students, from a variety of countries of origin, expressed to me: the American government could not be trusted or honored; any accommodation to American norms or authority was temporary; the day would come when jihad would usher in Islamic domination of America.

The nicest people exited any concept of human decency when it came to Jews, whom they condemned as demonic creatures worthy of the worst possible treatment. This included students from Malaysia, a country with a minimal Jewish presence. Gender apartheid was another constant feature. One of my students, Abdullah, was an otherwise admirable man who worked full time while attending school full time – he said he slept one day a week. Abdullah casually remarked that if he discovered that his wife was cheating on him he would, of course, kill her.

I saw otherwise dignified, driven Muslim women debase themselves when ordered around by even younger male relatives. In one home parents proudly displayed photos of their children. The youngest child, a boy, was honored with central placement and a photo four times bigger than the photos of his older sisters. Otherwise very self-possessed women rationalized polygyny. “Of course he takes a new wife when the old wife becomes fat and unattractive. It’s only natural.” “Of course we marry off girls young. That saves them from becoming sluts, like Americans.”

I emphasize that these students came from across the Muslim world because apologists for Islam insist that this or that unattractive feature is not really Islamic, but, rather, is limited to certain populations. Apologists will insist that female genital mutilation is merely an Arab “cultural” practice unrelated to Islam. Malaysia is thousands of miles from the nearest Arab country. Over ninety percent of females in Malaysia have endured female genital mutilation. They believe that it is Islamically necessary.

All of these students lived lives that contradicted the Islamic ideals to which they paid lip service. At a party I offered Salah some crackers. He declined, fearing the presence of lard, forbidden to Muslims. Salah was holding his beer in his hand. Alcoholic beverages are “haram,” forbidden, just as is pork fat. Clearly, though, Salah prioritized beer consumption over adherence to Islam.

Similarly, a Muslim student who privately confided in me over-the-top genocidal intentions toward Jews socialized warmly with an Israeli student. Another student insisted to me that the thought of questioning any aspect of Islam terrified her. The Qur’an assured her that to doubt Allah for so much as one second guaranteed an eternity in hell. But when with me she removed her hijab as quickly as possible and griped about the burden of wearing it. She planned to become a physician, and she griped about her family forcing her to skip schoolwork so she could cater to her father’s all-night gatherings. Another insisted on her Muslim identity but risked honor killing at the hands of her family by carrying on an affair with a non-Muslim American.

These students were walking a tightrope. They wanted all the haram goodies – from fingernail polish to dating to freedom of conscience – that America, democracy, and the West offered them. But their families drilled into them that leaving Islam is death.

The wider American culture, then, plays a prominent role in the day-to-day choices and long-term trajectory of Muslims. Would American media, academia, and political and religious leaders have the courage to tell the truth about jihad, gender apartheid, and the lack of freedom of conscience in Islam? Would America demand that Muslim immigrants honor the Oath of Allegiance they took to the Constitution? Or would America take the disastrous path described by Bruce Bawer in his 2007 book, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within? In that book, Bawer describes European nations making choices that encouraged the formation of radical Muslim enclaves.

Alas, too many Americans lack the courage to champion their own ideals. This lack of courage was dramatically displayed even in the immediate aftermath of 9-11. On October 5, 2001, in a broadcast titled “Islam 101,” Oprah Winfrey whitewashed Islam. On September 17, 2001, former President George W. Bush, at the DC Islamic Center, insisted that “Islam is peace.” Bush was accompanied by Nihad Awad. After the October 7, 2023 terror attack on Israel, that same Nihad Awad praised both the atrocities committed by his fellow Muslims and the Islamic ideology that inspired those attacks. After criticism from the Biden White House, Awad insisted that his comments, captured on video and audio, were taken out of context.

America could be putting her unique right to free speech and her immense cultural, scholarly, and policy power to work. Americans didn’t hate my Polish and Slovak cousins during the Cold War, even though some of them were card-carrying Communists. America, rather, presented a superior economic and political system. America could be doing the same now. Not hating Muslims. Just, simply, telling the truth about Islam and presenting a superior alternative, not necessarily in the form of any one religion, but, rather, in the form of Western ideals: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, equality under the law, and war always as a last resort and only in accord with “just war” principles.

I cherish anyone willing to do this work. Robert Spencer, David Wood, Ridvan Aydemir, Yasmine Mohammed, Hatun Tash, Nabeel Qureshi, and Mosab Hassan Yousef are some of my heroes. As a Shin Bet operative, Yousef saved many lives. As a truth-teller about Islam, Yousef may save many more. Under one of many YouTube videos featuring Yousef, there are comments from posters identifying as former Muslims. They express depthless gratitude to Yousef for speaking what they themselves wish they could communicate to the world. One such post reads, “I am an Ex-Muslim from Iran. I have felt all of Mosab Yousef’s words about the violence of Islam with every single cell of my body. Whatever this brave man says is the absolute truth and unquestionable facts of Islam. Only one who has been under the tyranny of Islam fundamentalists can understand and feel what he talks about.”

I noticed a missing puzzle piece in Yousef’s 2010 book, Son of Hamas. The book was a briskly told spy narrative. The hero was a man who turned his back on his natal religion, his father, and his homeland. How did this guy feel about all that? What kind of trauma was he experiencing?

From Hamas to America: My Story of Defying Terror, Facing the Unimaginable, and Finding Redemption in the Land of Opportunity was published on August 6, 2024 by Forefront Books. It is 300 pages. Yousef’s cowriter here is James Becket. From Hamas to America provides the depth and color that was missing from Son of Hamas.

For Yousef’s many fans, this book is a must-read. From Hamas to America introduces new insights into and new compassion for Yousef. Those wanting better to understand tensions between Muslims and Israel will benefit from this book. Given Yousef’s life trajectory, From Hamas to America offers insights into how humans anywhere might respond to extreme conditions.

From Hamas to America reads like a series of letters from a passionate man unburdening himself, uninhibited by fear or convention. I wish this book were more tightly organized; organization would have made for an easier read. There’s another reason I wish it were better organized. Mosab Hassan Yousef is a contrarian who obeys only his own inner voice. Were he not that person, he never could have performed the heroic feat of abandoning Hamas and helping Shin Bet foil suicide bombings. Yousef is also, verbally, a loose canon. For example, in a 2023 video, Yousef says, “If I have to choose between 1.6 billion Muslims and a cow, I will choose the cow.” In a volatile situation, such hyperbole hands ammo to Yousef’s many critics.

In From Hamas to America, Yousef makes what strike me as undisciplined criticisms of Christians and Jews. These statements are modified by subsequent statements elsewhere in the book that are more generous. Better organization could have clarified more extreme statements. Such organization could have resulted in an “one the one hand; on the other hand” essay. On the one hand, Yousef felt misunderstood, mischaracterized, and exploited by some Christians and Jews. On the other hand, he acknowledges, often many pages after his critical commentary, that Christian and Jewish supporters enabled him to express himself and supported him financially. Many became as close as family. And though he offers sweeping criticisms of Christians and Jews, he acknowledges that he met sincere and admirable Christians and Jews who went the extra mile to help him.

Yousef protests against being categorized by others. I must, though, acknowledge that Yousef voices Hindu/Buddhist dogma throughout the book, including on every page of the preface. “Real change happens from within … the reality of the external world is nothing but a giant mirror projecting back at us who we truly are … the mind’s delusions and inability to see things for what they are because we re blinded by lust or hatred” are “mental traps.” Thus blinded by delusions, humans “get stuck and are incapable of breaking the vicious cycle of rebirthing and not realizing how reality has been originating … If we don’t navigate our way out of a certain matrix or level of consciousness, we could get stuck for eternity without reaching the light at the end of the tunnel. Awareness of consciousness and its fluctuations is the cure.”

“Human suffering” will be “eradicated” by “aligning ourselves according to the universal laws of cause and effect.” Elsewhere, Yousef has made clear that what he assesses as a “universal law of cause and effect” is the Hindu concept of “karma.” To escape karma, one must cultivate non-attachment. “The more responsibility and relations we have, the more we compromise our freedom.” “In a realm ruled by change … every relationship or attachment is a form of imprisonment … the secret is non-attachment. To “eradicate” the “origins of suffering” one must conquer “hatred, lust, and delusions … observation, moderation, patience, faith, discipline, physical and mental purity, and breath regulation can get any individual out of any mental or physical captivity.” Everything Yousef says here, again, in the preface to his book, aligns with the dogma of the Hindu / Buddhist worldview and canonical texts, for example, the Bhagavad Gita.

Yousef began practicing yoga years ago in California. He enjoyed studying with “gorgeous, half naked students.” He eventually chose a teacher whose wife is a “Japanese goddess.” He currently, he says, practices Ashtanga yoga three hours a day.

Yoga is not, as it is marketed in the West, a non-religious calisthenic. It is a Hindu religious practice with a Hindu religious goal. One must transcend objective reality. One must recognize that existence, including one’s own existence, and even the mind recognizing this fact, is a transitory illusion. One must lose oneself and unite with an infinite and impersonal brahman. Yoga is practiced to achieve this end. As one yoga school puts it, the Ashtanga yoga’s practitioner’s goal is to “transcend human suffering and to reach self-realization and ultimate freedom.”

Yousef, while rejecting the claim that he became a convert to Christianity, says that, rather, he appreciates “Christ consciousness.” “Christ consciousness” is an invented, non-Christian concept. In the Bible (see here) and in Christian belief, Jesus is the son of God and also God incarnate. Through his suffering, death, and resurrection, in an act of love, Jesus offers redemption and eternal life to believers; see here. It’s ironic that Yousef, who objects so strenuously to being mischaracterized by others, insists on mischaracterizing Jesus.

Jesus, Yousef claims, “was able to rise above the material.” This is Gnosticism, reflecting its signature contempt for the body and the physical world. “Christ consciousness,” according to Yousef, is the way that a man like you and I, Jesus, achieved a higher spiritual level through his own spiritual practices. Similarly, a man like you and I, Siddhartha, through his own efforts, attained “Buddha consciousness.” Jesus and Buddha are peers. Yousef also includes Socrates in this category.

Any one of us, in this belief system, though esoteric spiritual disciplines, can transcend the limitations of the physical world and attain higher consciousness and achieve salvation not just for ourselves but, as Bodhisattvas, for others, as well. Christianity is not in accord with any of these non-Biblical beliefs. Christ was a man, but he was also God incarnate. He could save humanity; we, no matter how many good deeds or how many hours of mediation we practice, cannot replicate Christ’s salvific sacrifice.

For Yousef, Jesus was “a friend” and an “avatar.” “Avatar” is a Hindu term for a human embodiment of a Hindu deity, or, more abstractly, a Hindu concept. One can be an avatar of Vishnu, a god, or an avatar of compassion, an abstract concept. Yousef writes, Jesus “lived by the cosmic laws … I was fascinated by the human journey of this great master.”

Yousef’s insistence on shoving Jesus into a Hindu cookie cutter is accompanied by his occasional contemptuous statements about contemporary Christians and Christianity. For example, after Yousef insists that Jesus was an “avatar” he says that there is a great difference between the real Jesus, whom Yousef recognizes, and “what was to become the religion Christianity incorporating his name.” He condemns Christians – he doesn’t say which ones or if he means all – as “Pharisees.” “On my journey to higher consciousness” – read the Hindu/Buddhist concept of “enlightenment,” “I came to see the whole theological scaffolding … based on delusion.” To be part of a church, “All members had to trade in their freedom and put on the mask that makes you fit in.”

Yousef depicts himself as above-it-all and superior to the benighted masses who buy into “delusion.” He quotes Kirkegaard. “No witness to the truth dares to get involved with the crowd.” Au contraire. Jesus was not just a witness to the truth, he was the truth. And he willingly interacted with us, fallen humans, and he did so lovingly and humbly, as one of us, as described in Philippians 2:6-7 “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”

The Jesus of the Bible is rooted in the physical world and the flawed humans who inhabit it. His first miracle was to provide fine wine for a wedding party. Jesus did manual labor. He identified himself with the most fundamental staples we require to continue living: breath, water, bread, wine. He fed a mass of followers loaves and fishes. Part of God’s plan for Jesus was a very physical death and an equally physical resurrection. Catholicism incorporates the body in worship. We fast, we feast, we stand, we kneel, we light candles and burn incense, we consume the Eucharist, we shake hands, and we anoint.

Interestingly, Yousef’s problems with corporality mirror Islam’s problems with a God who chose corporality. One can find Muslims arguing on social media that no God could possibly sink so low as to defecate. Here’s an example from a Christmas, 2023 Facebook post by “The Global Muslims.” “Imagine your false God incarnate urinating and defecating. I’m sure when he attended maturity, he had a wet dream!” This contempt for the body is expressed in the hadith, or saying of Muhammad, Sunan Ibn Majah 348. “Most of the torment of the grave is because of urine.” That is, people who don’t remove any droplet of urine from themselves are condemned to Hell. Islamicity.org interprets this hadith as instructing the believer to “Take care of your hygiene even after death” in order to “attain Allah’s mercy and forgiveness.”

Hostility to the body is reflected in Hinduism. “Sannyasi” can be translated as “throw out everything.” For millennia, renunciates, or sannyasis, have conducted their own funerals. Many remain naked, cover their bodies with ash, never cut their hair, eat little, and refuse to speak. Some attach heavy weights to their testicles. I encountered such men and women when I lived in the Indian Subcontinent.

Catholicism, too, includes “mortification of the flesh.” But Catholics are warned against “scrupulosity,” or taking mortification too far. Pope John Paul II outlined a “theology of the body” that recognizes corporality’s role in salvation. “The body, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world, the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God, and thus to be a sign of it,” writes John Paul. We need not just our bodies, but others’ as well. “Man became the image of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons, which man and woman form from the very beginning … Man becomes an image of God not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion.”

Yousef’s insistence that we Christians are trapped in a “delusion” that he transcends through yoga irritates me, and it’s even more irritating given that Yousef has trouble pronouncing “delusion,” which he pronounces as “delujun.”

In From Hamas to America, Yousef writes that Jesus’ “message of love was like a breath of fresh air in my known world of dogmatic Islamic hatred.” The Judeo-Christian belief that “human life was sacred” was new and precious to Yousef. In an April, 2024 interview with Jordan Peterson, Yousef described struggling with Jesus’ teaching of loving one’s enemy. At first, “the challenge of love thy enemy really made peace with the world … this what helped me actually heal and progress. So I made a principle that I did not want to kill any of my opponents.”

He now regrets that decision. “Today I regret it. The influence of Christ consciousness of just love everybody unconditionally did not get me to where I needed to be. Because today I’m under the influence of cause and effect, not right and wrong. And I think there is no escape for anybody from karma or from their own actions. Nobody is above this universal law.”

Western New Agers have a romantic fantasy of karma. Karma does not mean justice. Karma keeps the caste system in place. A Hindu who violates the rules of caste risks rebirth as a vile creature, a cockroach, for example. The concept of karma is also used to justify indifference to others’ suffering. There are 200 million Untouchables, aka Dalits in India, and many suffer horrific abuse; see here and here. The concept of karma informs the believer that Untouchables deserve their suffering because of violations, committed in a previous life, of Hinduism’s value system.

When I taught in Nepal, my superiors encouraged me to, as many Nepali women do, sleep outside when menstruating. Menstruating women are deemed so filthy in Hinduism that their so much as looking at the family’s cook fire can damage the karma of all present. Menstruating women in Nepal sometimes die while sleeping outside, from hazards like exposure, snake bite, and smoke inhalation.

Yousef’s harshest criticism of Christians involves an alleged evangelical interpretation of Revelation. The book of Revelation is the last book of the Christian New Testament. The Bible is not one book, but a collection of books by various authors over the course of at least 1,500 years. These books fall into various genre. Genre is key to understanding. For example, many Jews and Christians understand the Creation story as telling a truth but in poetic language. They do not believe that God really created the universe in six days. Such readers point out that the sun, which we use to measure days, was not created till day four. They also point out that an omnipotent God does not require “rest” on the seventh day. On the other hand, many Christians who take Genesis as telling truths in a poetic manner accept the Gospels as reportage. That is, we believe that Jesus was a real man who really performed all the acts described in the Gospels.

The New Testament’s final book, Revelation, was written by a Jewish Christian during a time of persecution. This author, identified as John of Patmos, wrote for a Jewish Christian audience. Given persecution, the author chose to write in code. The code he selected is largely chosen from the Old Testament. The key to Revelation can be found in books like Daniel, Ezekial, Psalms, and Isaiah. Interpretation of this code is an art, not a science. Revelation’s most famous coded message, the number 666, can be interpreted as referring to a future enemy; it can also be interpreted as a reference to the Roman Emperor Nero, a past enemy.

I have encountered Christophobes who insist on the following. Evangelicals believe that the reestablishment of a Jewish state in Israel is a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. These Christophobes go on to claim that evangelicals want or expect Jesus, when he does return, to cast Jews into Hell. Yousef criticizes his Christian supporters thus. “We’re talking nuclear war … nuclear Armageddon … I already have a lot of evangelicals against me when I tell them they are complicit in the bloodshed in the Middle East.” The Rapture will allow all “true believers” to “escape” this war. “Israelis who have nurtured these evangelical Zionists will be incinerated in a lake of fire.”

I asked Douglas Groothuis, an evangelical scholar, to comment on the accuracy of Yousef’s characterization. Prof. Groothuis responded. “Evangelicals don’t agree on the Jews or the state of Israel. Those who are dispensationalists believe that God has a distinct plan for the Jews that includes their own state … Evangelicals, unlike Catholics (since Vatican II), do not think that Jews have their own way of salvation apart from conversion to Christianity … Paul gives an extended discussion of God’s plan for the Jews in Romans, chapters 9-11, although it has been subjected to several interpretations. To my knowledge, no evangelicals want Jews to go to hell … Our attitude should be that of Paul who greatly desired that they recognize Jesus as Messiah.” Groothuis cites Romans 9:1-3.

I also asked Daria Sockey, Catholic author and educator. “The Catholic church does not interpret the book of Revelation the way evangelicals do … I can assure you that the Catholic tradition doesn’t have an ‘end times’ timeline based on Revelation. We have various schools of thought on various parts of that very confusing book.”

Yousef’s reaction to Christianity reminded me of a Zen quote. “Before I began studying Zen, mountains were mountains and rivers were rivers. After my first exposure to Zen, mountains were no longer mountains and rivers were no longer rivers. After enlightenment, mountains were again mountains and rivers were again rivers.”

Yousef’s problems with Christianity are not unique to him. We’ve all been there. We meet leaders with feet of clay. We despair that our fellow congregants are not as saintly as we’d like; they completely fail to glow in the dark. We go to God in prayer and feel unheard. Yousef quit; those of us still in church didn’t quit. We pushed through, we read our ancestors who also lived through dark nights of the soul like Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Thomas Merton and Mother Teresa. Rather than abandoned, our faith matured.

Given his objections to Christians and to Christianity, Why then did Yousef make his association with a Christian church public? He was seeking asylum in the US, and he knew that Islam demands death to apostates. The threat of death would reinforce his asylum claim. “The label ‘evangelical Christian’ would provide me with some protection.”

Yousef takes a similar utilitarian approach to FOX. FOX featured Yousef, which was to his advantage. Even so, he disagreed with much of their broadcasting. But he valued the platform FOX offered him.

Another theme in the book is reminiscences of Yousef’s early life in Ramallah. These reminiscences include depictions of Muslim Arabs mistreating each other. Yousef’s father married his daughters off to men who mistreated their wives. One disappeared, leaving his wife to be a servant to his parents. One, a physician, imprisoned his wife in a basement in Dearborn, Michigan. “My beloved sister” lives “in a form of slavery,” he writes. One groom was an imprisoned terrorist. One of Yousef’s uncles robbed Yousef of tens of thousands of dollars. One Hamas leader tied ten-year-old Yousef to a post and beat him with an electric cable; Yousef lost consciousness. “It’s hard to think of a day in my childhood when I didn’t get beaten up by someone: father, teacher, IDF soldiers, classmates, Fatah rivals … street thugs.”

When he was eight, the family joined in a celebration of the olive harvest. An adult man got him alone and “violently” sodomized the boy, traumatizing him for life. The community, he reports, ruined the lives of “outgoing” girls who were denounced as prostitutes. There were vendettas and honor killings. Arab culture is a “duty-to-get-even culture,” an “eye-for-an-eye” culture. A man shot another man to death, making sure to aim for his testicles. This was the result of conflict over a woman. It was taken for granted that anyone who left Islam should be killed.

When Yousef was a young boy, an adult female exposed herself to him and encouraged him to fondle her, instructing him on best technique. “Women have no rights … men beat their wives and commit marital rape.” Men could not marry unless they had a “bride price,” leading to frustration and the selling off of daughters to raise money for the sons’ bride price. “I could see a direct connection between a sick culture and a young person willing to blow himself up.” The violence stretches back to the putative founder of Islam, Muhammad. “Of the first four of Muhammad’s companions to take the reins of power, three were assassinated.”

In spite of his cooperation and his warm relations with his handler, Loai, aka Gonen Ben Itzhak, “I am not a fan of Shin Bet” he says. “They had no respect for any Arab who collaborated with them. They were racist and tribal … the Israelis would squeeze you dry like a lemon and throw you in the trash.” Shin Bet dismissed Ben Itzhak. Yousef was handed over to Tamir, “a devout Orthodox Jew” and “anti-Arab racist.” “Tamir took full credit” for work Yousef performed for the Shin Bet. After ten years with Shin Bet, Yousef left for the US.

Yousef’s life in the US was worthy of a picaresque novel. In the US, Yousef was poor and desperate, and, as happens when one is poor and desperate, Yousef aligned himself with just about anyone willing to allow him to couch surf. Most normal people don’t like to take such risks, so Yousef ended up with a motley crew that included drug addicts, domestic melodramas, and zealous Christians. He was in Southern California, no less, where extremism of various kinds flowers. “She was both drunk and hungry for love … her brother was part of a Mexican drug cartel” he reports of one such episode. One man who allows Yousef to stay with him throws a pot of boiling water on Yousef. Another man talks to him about watching porn and masturbating. One eats raw meat. A nonagenarian offers him $1,500 monthly in exchange for the friendship he offers her self-destructive grandson. As I was reading of these often sad and tawdry adventures, I thought, “Does he realize that he is not meeting normal people?” Instead of that awareness, Yousef reports, “I was getting a crash course in the reality of middle class America.”

“Islamophobia ruled the day” in the US, Yousef claims. No, it doesn’t. Islam enjoys protections Christianity and Judaism don’t receive, and don’t want. You can leave Christianity and Judaism. You can criticize Christianity and Judaism. We want it that way. The Judeo-Christian tradition demands freedom of conscience. Our God values our free will.

Yousef describes those processing his appeal for asylum in the US as “malignant.” They weren’t “malignant.” Yousef was a former terrorist. The bureaucrats were trying to fend off the next, inevitable, Muslim terror attack in the US. Their work is imperfect; there have been several Muslim terror attacks and thwarted, planned attacks since 9-11. If vigilance were stricter, eight-year-old Martin Richard, and too many other innocents, would still be alive

After writing Son of Hamas, Yousef was offered various deals, including speaking gigs, often in front of Christians and Jews, “I did get paid a lot of money.” He gets big bucks from publication and an advance on a feature film that is never made. Suddenly he is rolling in dough. It’s a transformation worthy of Oliver Twist. He buys a Mustang, a Porsche, a carbon fiber bicycle, and a Ducati Scrambler and a Harley Breakout motorcycle. He shops “at the most expensive clothing stores.” He enjoys pleasant interludes, always with “beautiful” women, including a “beautiful blonde model.” Nothing less than a “ten” for him. He skydives, gambles, and takes drugs.

In Scottsdale, Arizona, Yousef passes out. His heart stops for thirty seconds. He realizes that his newfound wealth is inadequate to fill “the void of a vanished family, nor to erase the traumas registered in my system.” Subsequently, “I sold everything … I applied for a visa to a country in Southeast Asia.” “The women were gorgeous,” he reports upon arrival on his island.

Yousef still does drugs; he reports doing ayahuasca ten times. Yousef, a traumatized human being, tried what we in Twelve Step call the “geographic cure.” He left his abusers. He tried the chemical cure – he took drugs like ayahuasca. And he’s trying the mechanical cure. Three hours of Ashtanga yoga a day will repair his mechanism.

Yousef is a powerful man and by his own admission he is also a wounded one. I wish I could communicate the following to him. Yes, Mosab, you have had a bumpy ride. You are not alone. Lots of us have had bumpy rides. There are others out there who were sexually abused and beaten. Who had to leave their families to find sanity. Who risked everything, including death, to tell difficult truths. It would benefit you to spend more time with your fellow survivors. You’ve exposed yourself to people whose ability to contribute to your healing is limited. Meet with others, including Christians, who have lived some of the same traumas you have lived, who have walked some of the same spiritual treks you have walked.

Danusha Goska is the author of God Through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery.