The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Former Hamas terrorist also Christian and Israeli agent

This was an interesting Wall Street Journal promotional article, featuring a scion of the Hamas leadership, now in exile in the United States, who converted to Christianity and became a double agent for Israeli intelligence (not necessarily related actions–the double agent status seems to have come first) while still serving as a high ranking Hamas leader.

I call it a ‘promotional article’, because the man’s agent is promoting this fellow’s upcoming autobiography, Son of Hamas. Nothing exactly wrong with that, just be aware that he’s doing this article for an extra motivation–in order to sell his forthcoming autobiography.

The cynically suspicious side of my brain notwithstanding, his story has this much of the ring of truth: his Christianity is important but fairly low-keyed, when he could have easily ramped it up to appeal to a larger audience. (Based on the relatively little information in the article, he seems reluctant to do that because to him that would only be another way of taking advantage of religious extremism.) In that light, and accepting his statements on that topic at face-value, it’s interesting how his conversion helped him try to save lives not only of potential Israeli victims but also the lives of his fellow terrorists (including his father, one of the chief founders of Hamas, now imprisoned) from being just killed off by the Israelis. Why? Because he found God’s love, especially for God’s (and for our own) enemies, to be so crucially true and important; and thanks to the gospel of Jesus Christ he rejected the “God of hate” being preached by his friends and followers.

He doesn’t specifically say he’s a universalist, or not in this article anyway; and his testimony could easily be acknowledged by a non-universalist, too. But I thought it would be specially resonant with Christian universalists, for what ought to be obvious reasons. :slight_smile:

I saw a a Shawn Hannity special on him the other night.

Very interesting.

Thanks Jason.

I recently found an interesting blog defending the intergrity of this man (which has been under attack apparently) at -

barthsnotes.com/2011/05/16/mosab … d-shoebat/

He sounds impressive to me too.