God's War on Terror: Islam, Prophecy and the Bible

by Walid Shoebat

  Later, we moved back to Bethlehem where my father enrolled us in an Anglican-Lutheran school to take advantage of the superior English courses. My brother, sister, and I were the only Muslims in the school. The three of us were hated, but not because we were Muslims, but because we were half-Americans. Although it was a Christian school, it still bore the traits of the Islamization form of Christianity that infects so many of the Palestinian Christians to this day. In order to get along—and sometimes simply to survive—many Christians in Islamic dominated countries adopt the hateful attitudes of the Muslims around them towards Israel, America, and the West. Because we were half-Americans, the teachers would often beat us while the other Christian students laughed.

  Eventually, my father transferred me to the Government school where I began to grow strong in the faith of Islam. I was taught that one day, the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy by the Muslim prophet Mohammed would come to pass. This prophecy foretold a battle in which the Holy Land would be recaptured for Islam and the elimination of the Jews would take place in a massive final slaughter. This prophecy is found in some of the most sacred books of Islamic traditions known as the Sahih Hadith (reliable traditions of Mohammed). This particular tradition reads as follows:

  “[Mohammed said:] The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them, until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews” (Sahih Muslim Book 041, Number 6985).

  When asked where this slaughter would take place, tradition states that it would be “in Jerusalem and the surrounding area.” I followed my father’s example when I was a youth and always paid attention to Islam and what our Muslim teachers taught us. Like so many of my classmates, I was deeply inspired by Mohammed’s dark and bloody vision. I offered my life to Jihad, or Holy War, eventually in order to help fulfill this prophecy. I wanted to be part of the unfolding of Mohammed’s grand plan, when Islam would gain the final victory over the Jews and finally—without any further obstacles—it would rule the world.

  During my early teenage years, there were often riots at school against what we called the Israeli occupation. Whenever I could, I assumed the role of agitator and instigator. I vowed to fight my Jewish enemy, believing that in doing so, I was doing God’s will on the earth. I remained true to those vows as I raged against the Israeli army in every riot I could. I used any means available to inflict maximum damage and harm. I rioted in school, on the streets, and even on the temple mount in Jerusalem. All throughout high school, I was always one of the leading activists for the cause of Islam. I would prepare speeches, slogans, and write anti-Israeli graffiti in an effort to provoke other students to throw rocks at the armed Israeli soldiers. The thundering echoes of our dark chants still reverberate in my memory:

  “Nopeace or negotiations with the enemy!”

  “Our blood and our souls we sacrifice to Arafat!”

  “Our blood and our souls we sacrifice to Palestine!”

  “Death to the Zionists!”

  My dream was to die as a Shaheed (a martyr for Islam). At demonstrations, I would open my shirt hoping to be shot—but because the Israelis would never shoot at the body—I never succeeded. When school pictures were taken, I would purposefully pose with a grim face anticipating that it was my turn to be in the paper as the next martyr. Many times, I came close to being killed during youth protests and clashes with the Israeli Army. My heart was resolute; nothing could take away my drive—my hatred and anger—other than a miracle. I was one of those young men that you might have seen on CNN hurling rocks and molotov cocktails during the days of the Intifada or “the uprising”. At the time, I would have resented the label; but the truth is that I was a young budding terrorist.

  The Islamo-Nazi brainwashing of my teachers and Imams—of my entire culture—was having its desired effect. The interesting thing is that I was not only terrorizing others, in many ways, I also terrorized myself. My ultimate fight was to gain enough merit—to build up a solid track record of terror—in order to earn Allah’s favor. I lived in fear of judgment and hell and thought that only by behaving as I did would I ever have a chance at making it into Janna (paradise or heaven). I was never confident that my “good deeds” would outweigh my bad deeds in the scale on the Day of Judgment I was driven by not only anger and hatred, but also spiritual insecurity and fear. I believed what I was taught; the surest way to ease Allah’s anger towards my sins was to die fighting the Jews. Perhaps, if I were successful, I would even be rewarded with a special place in heaven where beautiful wide-eyed women would fulfill my most intimate desires.

  It is hard to convey the degree to which someone like myself, growing up under the Palestinian education system is brainwashed. Every voice in authority speaks the same message; the message of Islam—jihad—hatred of the Jews—and things that no young mind should ever be subjected to.

  I remember an occasion at Dar-Jaser High School in Bethlehem during Islamic studies when some of my classmates asked the teacher if it was permitted for Muslims to rape the Jewish women after we defeated them. His response was, “The women captured in battle have no choice in this matter, they are concubines and they need to obey their masters. Having sex with slave captives is not a ‘matter of choice for slaves.’” This was not merely the opinion of the teacher, but is clearly taught in the Qur’an: “Forbidden to you also are married women, except those who are in your hand as slaves, this is the law of Allah for you” (Sura 4:24).

  Elsewhere it says:

  “O prophet; we allowed thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowries, and the slaves whom thy right hand possesseth out of the booty which Allah hath granted thee, and the daughters of thy uncle, and of thy maternal aunt, who fled with thee to Medina, and any believing woman who hath given herself up to the prophet, if the prophet desired to wed her, a privilege to thee above the rest of the faithful.” (Sura 33:50)

  We had no problem with Mohammed taking advantage of this privilege as he married around 14 wives for himself and several slave girls from the booty that he collected as a result of his victorious battles. We really never knew how many wives he had and that question was always a debatable issue to us. One of these wives was even taken from his own adopted son Zaid. After Zaid, married her, Mohammed took interest. Zaid offered her to Mohammed, but it was not until a “revelation” came down from Allah that Mohammed generously accepted Zaid’s offer. Others of Mohammed’s wives were Jewish captives forced into slavery after Mohammed beheaded their husbands and families. We learned these things in our Islamic studies course in High School. This was the man we were supposed to emulate in every way. This was our prophet, and from him we learned to hate Jews.

  I remember one occasion in Bethlehem when all the viewers in a jam-packed theater clapped their hands with joy as we watched the movie, “21 Days in Munich.” The moment we saw the Palestinians throwing grenades into the helicopter and killing the Israeli athletes, everyone in the theatre—hundreds of viewers—yelled, “Allahu akbar!” (Allah is the greatest!). This is the slogan of joy used by Muslims for victorious events.

  In an attempt to change the hearts of Palestinians, the Israeli TV station would show Holocaust documentaries. I would sit and watch cheering the Germans while I ate popcorn. My heart was so hardened, it was impossible for me to change my attitudes toward the Jews and only a “heart transplant” would do that job.

  By the grace of God, I had something that very few of my classmates had—a mother who was a compassionate and contrarian voice, patiently trying to reach me in the midst of the deafening cacophony of hatred that surrounded me. She would try to teach me at home about what she called “God’s plan.” She spoke to me about Bible prophecy; she said that the return of the Jews was part of this plan. God foreordained it—thousands of years before—and it was be
ing fulfilled right before our eyes, in our day. This to her, was God’s miracle in our generation for the world to see that “His will shall be done.”

  She also told me about many future events that were yet to be fulfilled—some of which are being fulfilled today—many of which we discussed in this book. She told me about Jesus’ warnings of false messiahs and counterfeit spiritual movements, of His prophesied return to Israel and an age of peace. However, all of this had little effect on me at the time, for my resolve was solid—I would live or die fighting against the Jews. Nevertheless, a mother never gives up.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but an American missionary couple had influenced my mother. She had even asked them to baptize her secretly. But when she refused to be baptized in a pond full of green algae, the missionary priest had to plead to the YMCA in Jerusalem to clear the pool of men, and my mother was then baptized. No one from our family knew.

  Many times my mother would take me on trips to various museums in Israel. This had a very positive effect on me and I fell in love with archeology. I was fascinated with it. In my many arguments with her, I would directly tell her that the Jews and Christians had changed and corrupted the Bible. Her response was to take me to the Scroll Museum in Jerusalem where she showed me the very ancient scroll of Isaiah—still intact. My mother made some of her most effective points using no words at all.

  Despite my mother’s patient and gentle attempts to reach me, I was unreachable. I would torment her with insults. I would call her an “infidel” who claimed that Jesus was the Son of God and a “damned American Imperialist.” I would show her pictures in the newspaper of all the Palestinian teenagers who had been “martyred” because of clashing with the Israeli soldiers and I would demand that she give an answer. I hated her and many times, I asked my father to divorce her and remarry a good Muslim woman.

  Despite all of this, it was my mother—when I was thrown in the Muscovite Prison in Jerusalem—who went to the American Council in Jerusalem to try to get me out. The Muscovite prison was a Russian Compound that served as Jerusalem’s central prison for those who were caught inciting violence against Israel. My dear mother was so worried over the direction that my life was taking that her hair started to fall out. Her worries were not unfounded. During my time in jail, I was initiated into Yasser Arafat’s Fatah terror group. Soon after, a well-known bomb maker from Jerusalem named Mahmoud Al-Mughrabi recruited me. The time had come for more than mere protests and riots. Al-Mughrabi and I arranged to meet on Bab-El-Wad Street at the Judo-Star Martial Arts Club run by his father near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. He gave me a very sophisticated explosive device that he had personally assembled. I was supposed to use the bomb—an explosive charge hidden in a loaf of bread—to blow up the Bank Leumi branch in Bethlehem. Mahmoud helped me smuggle the bomb, as did the Muslim Wakf; the religious police on the Temple Mount. From the Temple Mount, I walked out onto the platform with explosives and a timer in my hand. We walked along the walls and avoided all of the checkpoints. From there, I walked to the bus station and took a bus to Bethlehem. I was fully ready to give my life if I had to. I stood before the bank and my hand was literally ready to pitch the bomb at the front doors, when I saw some Palestinian children walking near the bank. At the last moment, I threw the bomb instead on the bank’s rooftop. And I ran.

  As I reached the Church of the Nativity, I heard the explosion. I was so scared and so depressed that I couldn’t sleep for days. I was only 16 years old. I wondered if I had killed anyone. That was the first time I came to grips with what it would be like to have blood on my hands. I didn’t enjoy what I had done, but I felt compelled to do it because it was my duty.

  It is also with difficulty that I recall to you this next story. It was my first attempt to lynch a Jew. Like swarms of locust, stones were flying everywhere as we clashed with the Israeli soldiers. A group of us had set fire to a row of tires to use as a blockade. One soldier was hit with a rock. He chased after the kid who had hit him. But instead, we caught the soldier. Like a pack of wild animals, we attacked him with everything we had. I had a club and I used it to pound him in the head until the club broke. Another teenager had a stick with a nail sticking out. He kept whacking the poor young man’s skull until he was covered with blood. We nearly killed him. Incredibly, as if with a final burst of adrenaline, he lunged across the blockade of burning tires and escaped to the other side where the other Israeli soldiers carried him to safety.

  Now, these many years later, it is hard for me to express how deeply it grieves me that I ever committed such acts. I am not the same person that I was in those days. By the grace of God, I ama changed man—a new person.

  Eventually I graduated high school. My parents sent me to the United States to seek a higher education. I enrolled at what was then called The Loop College, located in the heart of downtown Chicago. When I arrived, I immediately became involved with many anti-Israeli social and political events. I still sincerely believed that the day was coming when the whole world would submit to Islam and then the whole world would realize just how much she owed the Palestinian people for all of their losses as the vanguard in the Islamic war against Israel. The Loop College was full of various Islamist organizations. When I walked into the cafeteria, it was almost like walking into an Arab café in the Middle East. Various Islamist groups operated out of the school in those days, each competing for the recruitment of the other students. I immediately began devoting my energies to serving as an activist for the PLO—The Palestinian Liberation Organization. I was supposed to be officially working as an interpreter and counselor for Arab students through an American program called CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) in which I was paid by grants from the United States Government. The truth; however, is that much of what I did involved interpreting advertisements for events whose goal it was to win American sympathy for the Palestinian cause. Actually, “win sympathy” may be a rather misleading expression. We were attempting to brainwash the Americans—all of whom we viewed as being incredibly gullible. In Arabic, the advertisements for these events would openly use Jihadist, anti-Semitic descriptions such as: “There will be rivers of blood/Come and support us to send out students to Southern Lebanon to fight the Israelis.” The English versions of the signs, on the other hand, would utilize fluffy and innocuous descriptions such as: “Middle Eastern cultural party, come and join us, we will be serving free lamb and baklava.” That was 1970.

  Then came Black September. Black September is the month known throughout the Middle East as the time when King Hussein of Jordan moved to quash an attempt by the PLO in Jordan to overthrow his monarchy. Many Palestinians were killed during the conflict, which lasted for almost a year until July of 71. The end result of all this was the expulsion of the PLO and thousands of Palestinians from Jordan into Lebanon.

  Of course, the conflict spilled over and affected the various Arab student organizations at the Loop College. It was very disheartening and frustrating for me to watch, as I knew that without unity, the cause of Islam—the cause of the Jihad in America—would get nowhere. It was at this time that I joined Al-Ikhwan—the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is a father organization to dozens of other terrorist organizations throughout the world. I was not alone in joining The Brotherhood either. There were hundreds of other Muslim students from all over the United States that joined in those days. I believed that working as an activist for the Muslim Brotherhood was the best way to help bring about a much-needed unity among Muslims; not Palestinian Muslims or Jordanian Muslims, but rather one Muslim Ummah—one universal Islamic community, under the one umbrella of Islam. To this end, a Jordanian Sheikh named Jamal Said came to the United States to recruit students. The recruitment meetings were held in basements or rented hotel rooms. Muslim students flocked from all over the U.S. to attend the meetings and listen to Sheikh Jamal Said. Jamal had an almost legendary status and reputation. He was an associate of Abdullah Azzam, who is famous throughout t
he Middle East for being the mentor of none other than Osama Bin Laden. People often ask me if I think that there are terrorist cells operating within the United States. There can be no question that there are. While so many of America’s college students in the seventies were experimenting with drugs, protesting their government, and participating in the birthing of the “flower child” movement, they were oblivious to the other underground revolution that was being birthed by radical Muslim students across the country. Within Islam, it is taught that when the Muslims enter a country to conquer it for Allah, there are various stages to that “invasion”. Those were the early stages of the most subversive movement that this country will ever know. It was the birthing of the Jihadist movement in America.

  I want jump ahead and tell you about the man that I am today. In the early nineties, my very wise wife issued a challenge. Tired of listening to me argue and trying to convert her to Islam, she challenged me to study the Bible for myself to see if indeed all of the things that I had been taught about the Bible and the Jews were true or not. Thus began a radical life-changing journey. It was a journey that turned into an obsession until all my questions were answered. I would stay up late at night and read, pouring through the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. I read the Old Testament and the New. I studied Jewish history. I prayed and I wrestled with all of the things that I was discovering. Many of my beliefs that formed the very foundations of my Islamic worldview were beginning to crumble. Confronted with the obvious conflict between the worldview and the religion of my youth and the piercing quality of the Bible, I prayed to God for guidance. With all of my soul, I prayed,