'Jews for Allah' attempts to gain converts to Islam
Associated Press
October 23, 2003
DANBURY, Conn. -- Most days, laid-off telecommunications worker Mohamed Ghounem minds the world from behind a laptop propped on his living room coffee table. He's working to get the Quran translated into Hebrew. His Web site, created to woo Jewish souls to Islam, has gotten national attention.
But battling for converts can be dangerous work. The glasses the 32-year-old Muslim is wearing have no lenses: "It's a disguise," he said. "I've received death threats."
Ghounem, of Danbury, is the founder of Jews for Allah, a Web site - jewsforallah.com - that "invites" Jews to Islam.
"Basically, I'm a pioneer," said Ghounem, educated at Western Connecticut State University and Al Azhar University in Egypt. "One of my main goals is to inspire Muslims to invite Jews, to dialogue with them and to teach them about Islam.
"I'm not harassing anyone to convert. It's their free choice," he said.
"If someone moves off my site, I'm not going to chase them around the Internet," he later added.
Ghounem recently spoke to a reporter from the living room of his apartment as his 2-year-old daughter played on the floor. His honorable discharge certificate from the U.S. Army was propped up on the coffee table. A gold-leaf placard, the "Ninety-Nine Names of God," hung on the wall.
By Ghounem's thinking, the similarities of Judaism and Islam - similar dietary laws, the same Sabbath, the same belief in circumcision, and shared prophets - offer an entree for Jews into Islam. He is searching for a Jewish convert to be president of his organization as a means of legitimizing it. He said two converts have turned him down.
Though presidential candidates may be scarce, converts are many, Ghounem said. Just how many, he couldn't accurately say. "It's in the hundreds. I don't know. There are some - they're in the closet."
Ghounem's Web site solicits donations under the heading "Multi-National Muslim Committee." He said the Web site has attracted few donations to a Newtown post office box, especially over the last few months. "I'm asking for money from two peoples who aren't comfortable with each other," he said.
Some people aren't comfortable with Ghounem's mission.
Rabbi Tovia Singer, of the international anti-missionary organization Outreach Judaism, called the Web site dangerous, anti-Semitic and "pregnant with hate."
Ghounem said his goal is to convert the nation of Israel and Jews everywhere to Islam. The Web site states that the organization is "countering the schemes of deceptive Zionists and Judaic groups that target the Unity among Muslim families in the Islamic World."
Given tensions between Islamic people and the rest of the world, Ghounem's efforts seemed ill-timed, said Emad Ismail, an imam of the Islamic Society of Western Connecticut. Besides, he said, Islam teaches harmony with people of other faiths, all of whom were created by God.
"You cannot be in peace with God without being in peace with his creation," Ismail said.
The roots of Jews For Allah are in Ghounem's own conversion of sorts. His parents were "good Muslims," but he wasn't observant as a youngster. He said television and pop music were more important to him than Islam.
After a period of seeking that stretched through his 20s, Ghounem said one of his professors at WCSU spurred him toward Islam.
"I was very naive about my roots," he said. "What helped me was an African-American professor, (who) said that to move forward, you have to know your background. It seemed like he was looking right at me."
After WCSU, Ghounem went to Cairo and enrolled in a university where he learned Arabic, the basics of Sunni Islam and the Quran. "In Christian terms, I was touched by the spirit," he said. "I came back to share the wisdom and tranquillity from there. Not by evangelizing, but by trying to share it with more people."
Before Ghounem started his Web site, he first reached out to Jews and Christians in online forums. "I'd go into a chat room and say, 'Did you know Mohammed came after Jesus?"'
He eventually founded jewsforallah.com to clear up negative stereotypes of Islam, he said. "I said we worship the same God, just like you. A lot of people were telling me I worshipped Satan."
These days, Ghounem is working on his laptop, putting together a new book, one about "the 200 ways the Quran corrects the Bible."
"It will be the apocalypse of literature," Ghounem said.
Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press
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