“Love Your Enemies”

I had heard about Mosab Hassan Yousef from a segment aired by “60 Minutes” sometime ago. That he surfaced this week on TV and in newspaper articles (“They Need to Be Liberated From Their God,” WSJ) must have to do with the publication of his book, Son of Hamas, which I intend to read shortly.

Mosab, son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, founder and leader of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group, decided to turn away from terrorism and a life of violence to become a double-agent for Israel and Palestine so that he could save lives, he said, and later on converted to Christianity. When asked what it was that made him embrace Christianity, he said one passage from the Bible did it for him: love your enemies.

There’s something profound about loving one’s enemies. It has both political and spiritual implications. Putting aside policy posturing, international relations precepts, and sophisticated academic discourse, “love your enemies” does indeed offer a true grounding for genuine peace in the community and in one’s self. It entails forgiveness, of overcoming a basic human passion called vengeance, of arriving at some understanding with the enemy, and, ultimately, of love begetting love. But unless situated within a spiritual context, everything becomes empty and meaningless.

Mosab puts it this way:

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.

To me, a Christian, Mosab is a lesson in faith and human understanding.