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By: Danusha V. Goska
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.
