From PLO terrorist to born-again Christian

Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star here profiles Walid Shoebat, a Muslim convert to Christianity whose days as a terrorist in the PLO have given way to a fervent Christian Zionism. The article is interesting on a number of levels, including DiManno's own strange take on Shoebat — beginning with the contradiction in her labeling him a "secular terrorist" even though he grew up a "Jew-hating Muslim." (Thanks to Nonie Darwish.)

Perhaps it's not so long or strange a trip from political terrorist to religious fundamentalist.

The secular terrorist, it might even be said, has become something of an endangered species these days, when so many of the world's violent struggles have been infused with religious justification. Piety serves as both motivating tool (recruiting foot soldiers from among the exploited believers) and deflective shield (interpreting scripture to rationalize murder and suppress opposition).

Walid Shoebat grew up a zealous, Jew-hating Muslim in the West Bank, progressing from a boy who threw stones to a young man who lobbed bombs.

He is now a born-again California Christian Zionist, having renounced both violence and Islam, which he persists in viewing as fatally intertwined — a position that will justifiably appall hundreds of millions of Muslims who neither practise nor condone violent tactics, while causing a great many Jews to just as understandably recoil from his ardent friendship, given that the fundamental Christian literalists love Jews only insofar as they can serve their End of Days purpose, as prophesied in Revelation.

How silly of Shoebat to persist in seeing violence and Islam as fatally intertwined! Has DiManno ever heard of Osama bin Laden, or Abdullah Azzam, or Omar Bakri, or Abu Hamza Al-Masri, or Abu Bakr Bashir, or Sayyid Qutb, or Syed Abul Ala Maududi, or Hasan Al-Banna, or any of the multitudinous others who have insisted, through their teachings on jihad, that violence and Islam are indeed intertwined?

Sure, there are millions of non-terrorist, non-violent Muslims, but where are their theorists? Where are they standing up and combating radical Islamic theology among Muslims? In the New York Sun today, Diane Ravitch says this of Irshad Manji: "In the aftermath of September 11, many people wondered out loud 'Where are the moderate Muslims?' When would we hear from thoughtful Muslims who were as offended by the poisonous hatred of fundamentalist Islam as the rest of us? Judging from Irshad Manji's 'The Trouble With Islam,' that near-deafening silence now may have ended." That's great, but where are all the other Manjis? You mean to tell me that we can only muster one courageous moderate Muslim spokesperson in two and a half years?

DiManno is faulting Shoebat for making an equation that Muslims are laboring strenuously to make around the world today.

Israel has pitifully few friends these days, assailed on all sides by a new version of anti-Zionism that's no more than the old version of anti-Semitism — denial of Israel's right to exist, but couched in a different language: the argot of occupation and Israel's perceived abuse of power, coupled with an alarming resurgence of pure anti-Semitism in Europe, a robust bigotry that doesn't even pretend to be what it's not, though hardly more virtuous for its transparency. This isolation might account for Israel forging an unholy alliance with the Christian right, though I'm prepared to accept that many righteous Christians have a genuine affection for Israel, a commitment to its political survival, and do not merely support the state as a Biblical prerequisite for apocalyptic annihilation and the dawning of the New Jerusalem.

In that context, maybe it doesn't matter much that Shoebat is a Christian fundamentalist, widely condemned as a traitor to Palestine, excoriated for betraying his family, his original Muslim faith and his troubled people. For which Shoebat does not apologize.

Why should he apologize? He has to live out the rest of his life under the death sentence given to apostates. If his family is made up of decent people, they should love him regardless of his religious faith. And why is acknowledging Israel's right to exist a betrayal of his people? Why cannot one support both Israel and Palestine? What about a two-state solution? It has been lost in jihadist intransigence: the biggest enemy to a negotiated peace is Hamas and its allies.

He's had his epiphany, and he speaks with the moral certitude of the enthusiastically converted. "The more you accept the teachings of the Bible, the more peaceful you become. The more you accept the teachings of the Qur'an, the more violent you will become."

This is patently absurd. It is also offensive. But there is truth in the far more qualified observation that Qur'anic teachings (like Biblical teachings, actually) have been disgracefully distorted in some quarters to promote jihad and to demonize the West, Christians and Jews and moderate Muslims alike.

What's that? Biblical teachings have been disgracefully distorted to promote jihad? DiManno's anxiety to repeat PC slogans is making her careless. In any case, why is it absurd and offensive to assert that the Bible contains more peaceful teachings than does the Qur'an? Has DiManno read either? This is not the same thing as saying that Christians have always been peaceful and Muslims violent. That really would be absurd. But evidently PC sensibilities also require that we assume that all religious texts are absolutely equal in their ability to inspire both peace and violence. I don't know why that must be the case. It is as absurd as insisting that all cars are equal in their gas mileage or that all schools provide exactly the same quality of education.

Although, it must be noted, even moderate Muslim states have little tolerance for Israel. Hating Israel is a common denominator and not exclusive to Muslim nations.

Hence the mythologizing of Palestinians, transformed these past 20 years into the most darling and blessed of the oppressed. It lends Palestinian terrorism a certain qualified éclat, distinguishing it from the garden-variety version of killers.

Shoebat was once a terrorist. To that extent, he knows whereof he speaks. Though I doubt whether his terrorist CV will gain him much street cred among Palestinians, or Canadians blindly supportive of the Palestinian cause.

The 43-year-old computer programmer was brought to Toronto yesterday by the local chapter of Betar Tagar, an international Zionist organization, to participate in a radio program, entitled Let's Talk Peace, emanating from the University of Toronto. The format had Shoebat interviewed in front of a student audience for a two-hour live taping of a radio show hosted by New York-based Rabia Tovia Singer. It's the first time the show, heard in Israel, has been taken to any university campus. Canada was picked, says Singer, because the case for Israel is not being made, or properly heard, in this country, where pro-Israeli voices have sometimes been silenced by Palestinian activism on campuses.

"The world does not see the truth about what's happening in the West Bank," Shoebat told the Star in an interview yesterday afternoon. "My purpose is to tell the West that they aren't getting the real picture, that what they're seeing is propaganda. I know the truth because I was there, I was part of it. And the truth is, we wanted to kill Jews long before the occupation. I wanted to kill Jews."

Shoebat's mother is a blonde, blue-eyed American Christian who converted to Islam upon marriage, his father a Palestinian Arab and professor of Islamic studies. Born in a village near Bethlehem, Shoebat grew up immersed in Islam but also steeped in hatred for Jews, even though he never met one until his teens. Even during the two years when he attended a Lutheran school in Jericho, says Shoebat, he was taught to vilify Jews. "I remember going to a zoo in Israel where they had a monkey that smoked cigarettes. We believed that monkey's ancestors were Jews."

Hmm. Why might that be? Might it be because the Qur'an says that Allah turned Jews into pigs and monkeys (suras 2:62-65, 5:59-60, and 7:166)? I am sure that DiManno doesn't know that those passages exist. I am waiting for the courageous moderate Muslim multitudes to fashion an exegesis of them that rules out race hatred.

Posted by Robert at January 26, 2004 11:16 AM
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