A young Muslim discovers he is one of “the most intense of the people in
animosity toward the believers” (Qur’an 5:82). This Qur’an verse and
other anti-Semitic passages are taken seriously, and are a principal
reason why “Mordechai says he received an anti-Israel and even anti-
Semitic education. ‘In Kuwait, wherever you go, you hear comments
against Jews – in the classrooms, in math or English lessons, and even in
Arabic lessons.'”
“Kuwaiti Muslim discovers he is ‘the Jewish enemy,'” by Shimrit Shaked,
Ynet News , December 4, 2014 (thanks to Maxwell):
“
He was born as a Muslim in Kuwait, never heard a good word said
about Jews, and then suddenly, in the middle of his life, Mumtaz
Halawa’s entire world turned over. He discovered that he was
Jewish.
After quite a difficult crisis, he immigrated to Israel and changed
his name to Mordechai. Until this very day, he has yet to tell his
father – a member of the al-Masri family from Nablus who lives in
Jordan – about the change has gone through.
“My house wasn’t a religious home,” Mordechai told Ynet and Orot
TV. “We called ourselves Muslims, but we didn’t really live like
Muslims.
“As a child in my grandparents’ home, I remember seeing my
grandmother reading from a printed book of prayers which wasn’t
in Arabic or in any other language I understood. But she sat with
the book and cried.”
One day, Halawa found a document with a foreign surname: Mizrahi.
The document was in Hebrew, English and Arabic and had been
issued in “Palestine.”
“I knew that my grandmother had converted from Judaism to
Islam,” he says, “but since I was born I was educated that if your
father is Muslim – you are Muslim.”
Mordechai says he received an anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic
education. “In Kuwait, wherever you go, you hear comments against
Jews – in the classrooms, in math or English lessons, and even in
Arabic lessons.”
After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, the family was forced to
leave the country and move to Jordan. As a student, Mumtaz began
studying in Syria, and two years later bought a plane ticket to
Canada and changed his name to Marc.
One evening, he met a man wearing a large black skullcap in the
library. He began talking to him, expressing his desire to create a
dialogue between Jews and Muslims.
“My grandmother is Jewish,” he said innocently. “She is a very nice
woman, not like the bad things people always say about the Jews.”
The man replied that according to Jewish Law, he is also Jewish, but
Halawa find it difficult to believe him.
“I said, ‘That’s a very good joke. But it’s impossible, because my
father is Muslim.’ But he insisted, saying that ‘according to
Judaism, it goes by the mother’s side. And because your
grandmother is Jewish, your mother was born Jewish and you were
also born Jewish.’
“I thought that man was just old, and I said: ‘No, come on, my
grandmother married a man named Muhammad al-Masri from
Nablus and converted to Islam. Believe me that anyone born Muslim
leads a Muslim life.’
“I spoke with a lot of confidence, and he interrupted me: ‘A Jew can
convert to a different religion 10 times and he’ll still be Jewish. So
your grandmother passed the ‘Jewish genes’ on to your mother, your
mother was born Jewish, and you were born Jewish.'”
Halawa was shocked. “It was too much. I had just been told that I
was the enemy I had been educated against. It was a shock. That
day, I felt like I had been living my whole life in a sort of dream
and that I had just woken up. It was as if someone had slapped me
and woke me up.
“I told my grandmother and she said, ‘Don’t ask any questions. We
are Muslims, and that’s all there is to it.'”
“O you who have believed, do not ask about things which, if they are
shown to you, will distress you….A people asked such questions before
you; then they became thereby disbelievers.” (Qur’an 5:101-102)
But Mordechai couldn’t shake off the new recognition. “I spent all
my time checking anything Jewish. I had studied many things in
Kuwait, but I had never learnt about World War II. I didn’t even
know who the good guys and bad guys were. I said to myself that if
I want to know, I should go see things myself.”
‘When you cut off a branch, it slowly dies’
After visiting the concentration camps in Poland, Marc decided to
change his name to Mordechai and immigrate to Israel, where his
grandmother and grandfather first met.
As he had no proof of his grandmother’s Jewishness, Mordechai
underwent a conversion process “so I could get married and have
Jewish children. That’s all I wanted.”
Mordechai has been fulfilling his dreams one after the other. He
recently got married and lives in Jerusalem. The guy with the
skullcap, who speaks fluent English, has come a long way since
answering to the name Mumtaz Halawa. A decade ago, he says, he
had no idea that he would live in Israel one day.
“I occasionally I stop my life and imagine myself living without
Judaism, and I immediately feel said [sic],” he says. “I haven’t told
my father to this very day. Perhaps he knows about it and perhaps
he doesn’t. I think it’s better not to trouble him. Both Judaism and
Islam teach us how to honor our parents….
He probably knows that he could be killed for leaving Islam, and that the
Qur’an teaches that a Muslim should hate even family members who are
not Muslims: “There has already been for you an excellent pattern in
Abraham and those with him, when they said to their people, ‘Indeed, we
are disassociated from you and from whatever you worship other than
Allah. We have denied you, and there has appeared between us and you
animosity and hatred forever until you believe in Allah alone” (60:4).


www.jihadwatch.org/2014/12/after-years-of-being-taught-to-hate-jews-muslim-discovers-he-is-jewish