Group: Effort to Deport Christian 'Son of Hamas' a Travesty
A church reform think-tank is urging Christians to take action on behalf of Mosab Hassan Yousef as the disowned son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef prepares to face a deportation hearing at the end of the month.
"We urge all to share Yousef's story about his struggle with DHS (the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) from his blog, to write to the Senior Attorney for DHS in San Diego, Kerri Calcador, who is determined to deport him, and to contact your members of Congress regarding this travesty," stated Faith J.H. McDonnell, director of the Religious Liberty Program at the Institute on Religion and Democracy.
According to Yousef, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security considers the 32-year-old asylum seeker a threat to America's national security and someone who must be deported.
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In February 2009, Yousef's asylum request was denied on the grounds that he was potentially "a danger to the security of the United States" and had "engaged in terrorist activity."
While Yousef admits openly to the integral role he played in terrorist group Hamas, he says the account of his conversion in his recently released book, Son of Hamas, should make perfectly clear that he is now an asset, not a threat.
In the book, Yousef shares how he came to question who his enemies really were after he discovered that Hamas was torturing its own people in a relentless search for collaborators.
After a chance encounter with a British missionary in 1999, Yousef started the six-year quest that would lead to his embrace of Jesus Christ and his departure from his family, friends and homeland.
During that time, Yousef also served as a spy for the Israeli security agency Shin Bet, to which he passed on all the information he gathered in terrorist meetings with then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, his father and other Hamas leaders.
"I … saved the lives of many people-including many Americans," an obviously upset Yousef emphasized last month. "Maybe Homeland Security only read a few chapters of my book."
After news spread of Yousef's situation, IRD's McDonnell expressed her group's concern over the irrationality of the Department of Homeland Security, as well as the danger to Yousef's life, if he is deported.
"This threat of deportation says how little the United States government understands radical Islam and the global jihad to impose Islam around the world, to which Yousef testifies," McDonnell stated.
Yousef had similarly highlighted the department's seeming lack of understanding.
"If Homeland Security cannot tell the difference between a terrorist and a man who spent his life fighting terrorism, how can they protect their own people?" he posed.
"Maybe they feel a little insecure because someone with my background got into this country and moved around for seven months, and they were clueless," Yousef added after sharing how he arrived in America in January 2007 on a tourist visa and showed up at the Homeland Security office seven months later to tell them who he was.
"I told them, hey, you didn't discover me. You didn't catch me. I came to you and told you who I am to wake you up," Yousef reported.
"I wanted them to see that they have huge gaps in their security and their understanding of terrorism and make changes before it's too late," he added.
Scheduled to stand before Immigration Judge Rico J. Bartolomei at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration Court in San Diego on June 30, Yousef is encouraging supporters to write letters to Homeland Security senior attorney Kerri Calcador – not simply to write on his behalf but to help the department make what he considers to be imperative changes.
Yousef is also encouraging those in the San Diego area to attend the 8 a.m. hearing and "see for yourself Homeland Security in action."
IRD's McDonnell, meanwhile, is rallying concerned Americans to sound off on Yousef's case, calling him "one of our allies" and "a great source of help in understanding what we face in radical Islam."
"It makes no sense that we are now treating him like the enemy," the conservative leader stated.
Presently, Yousef is residing in San Diego, where he works as a security guard at a grocery store and attends a Baptist church that knows him by his English name – Joseph.
Yousef told The Daily Telegraph that he is convinced that speaking out about the problems of Islam and the "evil" he witnessed back home will help to address the "messed-up situation" in the Middle East and one day bring about peace and enable him to return.
Yousef was disowned by his family after it became public that he had served as a spy for the Israeli security agency Shin Bet, Israel's version of the FBI.
