Daughter of Hamas breaks free from cult of death to seek new life

“My father and my mom, they raised us to hate Israel, and to hate Jewish, hate Christian, and even hate the Muslim Shia, and everyone who's not belonging to Hamas,” Juman al Qawasmi told Raj Nair, CBN News Producer and host.

“I was born and raised in Qatar, and my father is one of the founders of Hamas,” she explained. The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) recently showcased the remarkable testimony of al Qawasmi, who came from a top Hamas family and was married to one of the members of the terror group.

“I just want to say sorry, but we used to curse all the Christians and Jewish, we feel like we should kill them, because this is what Quran says,” al Qawasmi continued. Now she has distanced herself from both Hamas and the radical Islamic beliefs she grew up with.

Three years before Israel left the Gaza Strip in 2005, she married a Hamas member in Gaza. The Fatah party was soon overthrown and Hamas was voted into power. After some ten years of living under the violent rule of the terror group, al Qawasmi became increasingly alarmed by what she saw Hamas was doing with the control they were given. Initially, they had promised equality and help for Gazanד, but nothing positive ever seemed to materialize.

“I gave my vote to Hamas, I’m sorry for this,” she admitted with regret. “They just gave us some more wars and they start killing the Palestinians, they start to make us feeling, you know, if you are not belonging to Hamas, you should be scared.”

At that time, ISIS was on a killing spree in the Middle East, and even Muslims were not exempt. “I feel there’s something wrong with this religion,” said al Qawasmi, describing her growing unease. She felt she could never make Allah happy with her, and was constantly aware that there was no guarantee she would make it to heaven.

“I'm always scared from hell, I'm always scared when they put me on my grave, there's a snake coming to make me suffer…. Islam does not give you peace and you're always scared something wrong will happen,” she explained, talking about her anxiety that she could never be holy enough or do things correctly as a Muslim.

It was at this point that a friend who had left Islam and become an atheist suggested that she should try reading the Quran “without holiness, like a regular book.” He was confident that she, too, would realize that, when read in a straightforward manner, the Quran was full of killing and questionable morality.

Al Qawasmi came across the passages where Mohammed had taken the wife of his adopted son to be his own wife and then found justification for it, leading her to start asking questions. “I feel like, okay, the Quran does not make sense,” she said, explaining her journey away from Islam.

Unlike her friend, al Qawasmi still believed in God but felt He couldn’t be the character represented in the pages of the Quran. She started to pray every day, saying, “God, if you exist, I want to know you, I want to meet you,” she told CBN. “Because I know deep inside there is a God.” It was as she began to pray like this that Qawasmi started to experience miracles. “He healed my children, like they almost died,” she said.

It was during a time of war with Israel around 2014 that she received a dream of Jesus. The IDF had called her husband, warning him to clear everyone out of the house, but he lied and told them no one was home. “They’re calling people before they bomb their houses. They are not killing the houses randomly,” she said, explaining the IDF protocol. But a warning is no good if it is not heeded. Al Qawasmi, along with everyone else in the surrounding area, watched with horror as bombs started to fall.

“That night, they bombed our neighbor's house and it was so scary for me,” she said. She was certain she was about to die, and wept bitterly. “I've been crying a lot and that night I said, God, if you… exist, please, I want to know you, I want to call your name. I want you to save me,” she pleaded.

“So that night, I was dreaming and I saw myself with my mom, and my mom passed away in 2005 and that was in 2014. I saw my mom and we're… sitting in a balcony and the moon was so big and closer to us and my mom asked me to look at the moon and I saw Jesus' face coming out of the moon and he was speaking to me in Arabic.” In essence, Al Qawasmi relayed, Jesus had revealed Himself as God and was talking to her face to face. “He was saying, “'You are my daughter. Don't be afraid,'” she recounted.

Aware of a strong presence in her room even after awakening, she thought, “Oh, this is real.” She told Nair that she was new to the Arabic name for Jesus. “I never heard Yesua’s name before, because we call him Isa in the Quran,” and explained that all her life she’s only ever been around Muslim communities, and knew no Christians at all. “No one told me about Him before. But when I heard the name, I feel like it's beautiful name, and He's a beautiful God, and I feel peace inside my heart,” she said.

“For the first time, I feel like someone's loved me,” she recalled. She began googling the name “Yesua” to discover more about her new friend. She soon found she was not the first Muslim to have had a dream or vision of Yesua, she almost immediately came across His revolutionary teaching about loving enemies. Her face now glows with God’s love as she speaks about her sorrow for ever hating anyone, especially Jews and Christians.

Now Qawasmi can more clearly see the cruel tactics of the terror group she had been so intertwined with and understands the rage against Israel. She was also able to see that Israel was responding to provocation initiated by Hamas.

“What’s happening in Gaza is all about Hamas,” she told CBN. “We’ve been in peace until the Intifada was happening… Before this, like nothing was happening.”

She recalled the Israeli efforts to help rebuild Gaza in 2008: “Israel sent money to rebuild Gaza, and they promised them that “Gaza will be like Singapore, but just let's have peace.”

Meanwhile, at that time, al Qawasmi’s family was involved in the Hamas plan to build an entire city of terror tunnels under the Strip.

“They never built a shelter for people, for children, never, there's not one shelter in Gaza… It's all for Hamas,” she lamented. “They are hiding now, and they just let people die… like a human shield, it doesn't care for our lives. They just care for their position, their power, and they just want to stay strong and they want to stay in control, but they don't care for our lives,” she said.

Hamas may not care for the people of Gaza, but Yesua really does. Juman al Qawasmi has discovered the truth: Hamas may be an organization of hate and terror, but she is eternally loved by the Prince of Peace.