What No One Ever Told You About the Hamas-Israel Conflict with Apostate Prophet

Ladies and gentlemen, how does a Muslim growing up in Turkey become an atheist after being a Muslim and then become a Christian and then call himself the apostate prophet? Well, you know, we've had Ridvan Ademir on the show before. We're having him on again because we didn't finish our conversation. It was a fascinating conversation we had about a month or two ago. So here he is all the way from some underground bunker somewhere in the United States. Ridvan Ademir, also known as the Apostate Prophet, ladies and gentlemen. All right, enough, enough. Your crowd is obnoxious. Apostate Prophet on YouTube. Ridvan, I know that there are people that haven't listened to the first two shows. We're going to put the shows in the show notes so they need to go back and listen to it because we're not going to rehash everything. but give our audience just kind of a reminder as to how you became a Christian after being an atheist, after being a Muslim. That's a lot there. I know, but you got to do it quickly here. We got to do it quickly because if you don't do it quickly, you're going to hear this. You're fired. All right, so go. I will try. Well, first of all, thank you so much, Frank. Again, it's a great pleasure to be here. Great honor to talk to you again. uh always fantastic always fascinating and i really didn't expect the applause so i thank the crowd for that you deserve it yeah um so uh where should i start i mean yeah we have talked about this extensively we made uh two shows about that which uh once again uh as you did refer everyone uh to those it was um a couple of very very interesting uh very pleasant conversations that I personally enjoyed a lot. So I was born in Germany into a Turkish Muslim family, a Sunni Muslim family. My parents are still to this day very religious Sunni Muslims who take it all very seriously. And their hope for me was also that I would be just like them, a devout, observant, good Muslim. And for a time I was, and they were very happy about that. However, with a lot of skepticism, asking questions with the faith and its teachings conflicting with the things that I saw and heard and learned in Germany. And as a regular human being, I began to doubt Islam more and more. I read the Quran several times, which didn't help. It actually made things only worse. so um with a lot of questioning a lot of thinking a lot of asking questions receiving um very bad answers uh receiving the best answers that islam actually has to offer but realizing how bad those answers are i eventually ended up leaving islam and then spent about 10 years or so or more as an atheist or at some points as an agnostic atheist and eventually ended up becoming a Christian only last year. I was for the longest time very sympathetic toward Christianity and even said in the past in conversations that I had with my friend David Wood that that I wish it was true and but it took me a long time to accept that it is true because for the longest time I thought it's a very good system, it's a very good religion, it's a very good faith, I really like it, I respect it and all that, but I simply cannot believe that it is actually true. And it took a very long time to get rid of that, to get rid of that barrier and to finally take the step and become a Christian myself. And thank God, here I am. What were some of the things that were said or demonstrated to you that could be transferable to other people who come from a Muslim background that would be helpful to direct such people toward Christianity? Like, did people ask you questions? Did they befriend you? Did they offer evidence? What were some of the things that you might recommend that others do if they have Muslim friends and they want to move them toward Christ? I think the best example actually is, or the best thing to do is actually to be a good example, to be a good Christian, to be Christ-like. I think in my own life, I wasn't necessarily approached or taken, I wasn't approached and directly changed or challenged by other people. It happened rather as a consequence of everything that I learned and internalized. I grew up in Germany in a very Christian culture. However, with a family that was very, very much against Christianity and that described Christianity as evil, as perverted, and this and this and that. But very early on, in Germany, I learned Christian stories that stuck with me for my whole life. Among those were, for example, the stories or the story of a certain Saint Martin, who was a very popular figure among Christians in Germany and France and other places, whose story was, I didn't know much about his story, but the stuff that I learned about him as a child came from a song that we sang in school. And in Germany, there is no strict separation of religion and government or religion in school environment. So in school, we would sing religious songs sometimes. And there would be a song about the story of a certain St. Martin. And all I knew about him as a child was just that he was this good man called St. Martin. And it was basically a story about him. He was a soldier and he was riding out in the night on a very, very cold winter night where he, as a Roman soldier with this very heavy cloth that he wears that protects him from the snow and from the cold. he rides out and he encounters a poor man who barely has any clothes to wear. And that poor man says, please help me, I'm about to die. And so St. Martin, who himself has his cloak that he has to take care of by military standards, cuts it in half, and it's an enormous thing, that cloak, and gives that half to him. And later on, he goes to sleep and has a dream of Jesus who comes to him wearing that cloak and hands it to him while the poor man that he saw says, this is your servant Martin who helped me in my time of need. And, you know, nothing really was told together with that story. No lesson was really given, but it was just that song that I knew. And it kind of stuck with me my entire life. And later on, when I came back to Christianity, I appreciated how much weight that story and the very simple act of goodness, actually, the role that it had in my life. So what I'm trying to say here is that just as in the early centuries of Christianity, where the Christians weren't engaged in warfare, where they weren't trying to subvert and conquer the government, where they were simply spreading the gospel and sharing Christianity and living by example, and despite that being martyred, that was the most impactful time in terms of the spread of Christianity. and it's because simply being like Christ, simply being a good Christian, being like him is a very, very good example that can create wonders, that can impact a lot of people. Of course, I would also advise if you find a Muslim, for example, to talk to that person a little bit about his faith and to compare his faith to Christianity, for example. and to talk about Jesus, because Muslims say that they love Jesus. Muslims say that they also believe in Jesus, that they also respect Jesus. And it would be a good idea for a Christian who knows his stuff to talk to Muslims about who Jesus really was and what the evidence is for all of Christ's teachings, what his disciples taught, what the apostles taught and all that. These are very, very good starting points. And this ties into an argument that I only recently used. which kind of ties into what we call the Islamic dilemma. And I can explore that further, but I realized that I just spoke for a very long amount of time. We'll come back to it after the break. But is there anything comparable in Islam? The idea of charity, generosity, grace, love, or is it more of a religion of dominance and submission? Because Islam means submission. Is that why it's more attractive? Because you don't have that in Islam? So Islam means submission. It's all about submitting to Allah. It's all about submitting to Allah and others submitting to Muslims who submit to Allah. That's basically what it is. It's a top-down hierarchical system of military dominance. That said, it also, of course, has a religious aspect. And I can be charitable and say that there is a sense of charity in Islam, but it's not quite the same spirit because it's a reward and punishment-based system. We're talking to Ridvan Ademir, the Apostate Prophet. But Apostate Prophet on YouTube, check him out. We're going to talk a little bit later in the program about the origin of the Hamas charter and the origin of the Hamas-Israel conflict and what Ridvan thinks about it and what Muslims are taught about it. So don't go anywhere. You're listening to I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. What does a former Muslim, now Christian, believe about the Israel-Hamas conflict and also how to evangelize Muslims? We're talking to Ridvan Ademir. He is the apostate prophet on YouTube. 600,000 subscribers, 944 videos. Some of these videos have millions of views for good reason. Ridvan knows what he's talking about and he's not afraid to point out the problems with Islam and one of the problems we started to talk about just before the break, Ridvan had to do with the Islamic dilemma we talked about that on this program with you a couple of sessions ago but re-educate us on that and this new angle on this Islamic dilemma Yeah, so the Islamic dilemma is basically an argument that is that certain people like my friend David Wood have popularized a lot and it's airtight. It is a very solid argument that directly refutes Islam by its own logic. It's an internal critique that exposes Islam as completely incoherent. So it basically goes that the Quran itself affirms the divine revelation and preservation and authenticity and authority of what it calls the Torah and the gospel in Arabic, Injil, which comes from the Greek Evangelion. And so it commands the Jews and the Christians in Muhammad's time to actually still hold on to the Torah and to the gospel and to judge by them. It says you have nothing to stand upon unless you judge by the gospel and the Torah, it says to the Jews and Christians. But when we look at those scriptures, the gospel and the Torah, we see that their teachings very, very clearly and directly, irrefutably, completely contradict with Islam and are incompatible with Islam. Islam. So if Islam affirms the truth, the revelation and the preservation of the gospel, for example, and we look at the gospel and we see therein that it has that its main message its main doctrine is completely in contradiction with Islam that would mean that Islam is affirming something that refutes Islam as true And this is exactly what it does The Quran further on for example later on explicitly rejects that Jesus is the Son of God, that Jesus is divine, that Jesus is, as it says, one of three, or that Allah is part of three, for example. And it says that anyone who believes that the Messiah is God is a disbeliever who is condemned to hell and for him there is no helper. But this is directly what is confirmed in the Gospels. And this is directly the Gospel message, the New Testament message. So the idea there is that Islam directly affirms what refutes Islam. And the angle here specifically is when we focus on the aspect of Christianity, as said, the Quran clearly affirms that the gospel was revealed as a revelation by Allah and that it was perfectly preserved, that it exists today, that it is still authoritative. The Quran never at any point whatsoever says that the gospel has been textually corrupted. Muslims will only appeal to one or two parts where the Quran says that certain people write texts and say this is from God. But it never says anything like that about the gospel. So it is only left with affirming the gospel as authentic and true and authoritative. and the quran also on top of that says very very clearly that um that that allah will confirm and help and uphold and make superior those immediate followers and disciples of jesus who believed in him and who did not reject him and who did not want him crucified and they will be superior they will be made superior from that day from jesus's time until the day of judgment when you go back however to those people you will find out that those people were the early christians right they were uh they were paul they were the apostles they were peter the disciples of jesus himself who who affirmed paul and his teachings they all worked together the earliest historical evidence that we have is that christianity was understood pretty much exactly the way it is today by the earliest Christians and by his disciples. Even atheists and secular scholars will admit that by the time of the death and resurrection of Jesus, his immediate disciples believed that he is God, that he is the Son of God. They began worshipping him. So we can establish this very, very firmly. Now, we take all this information with the Quran affirming the gospel, but also directly praising and validating the earliest followers of Jesus. What we are left with is that the truth which Allah in the Quran hints at or explicitly confirms is that Jesus is the Messiah, that he was crucified, that he resurrected, that he is the Son of God, that he is divine, and that salvation is only through him. However, as I just said, all of this contradicts with the Quran itself, which explicitly rejects its doctrines. Now, why does the Quran reject it? because the Quran initially tried to appeal to Christians and Jews to win them over. Chronologically speaking, the earliest revelations of the Quran that mention Christians just try to appease them and try to make it look like, hey, guys, we are the same. Later on, as Muhammad interacts more and more with Christians and Jews, and they don't agree with him, the Quran becomes increasingly more hostile toward Christians and Jews and eventually ends up rejecting and condemning the religious beliefs of Jews and Christians. But at that point, it has already shot itself in the foot because it has already completely affirmed the beliefs that Jews and Christians have. So this is a very strong internal critique and clear logical incoherence within Islam. And what we can say, a good advice for Christians here would be, what we can do with all of this is to approach Muslims, if you want to approach Muslims, for example, and tell them about what the gospel actually is, what the New Testament is, what the gospels actually say about Jesus, what the earliest Christians actually believed, what the evidence, what all evidence shows us about what Christianity actually is and what Christ, what Jesus actually taught to his disciples. We are very clear and convinced historically, religiously, that what he taught to his disciples or what his disciples believed was the divinity of Jesus, that salvation is only through him, that he is the son. Muslims have to somehow make peace with this idea. They somehow have to deal with it. Or they have to eventually, if they don't want to believe all of this, they have to end up rejecting the message of Jesus and rejecting the message of his disciples. They have to end up rejecting Christ himself. But if they do that, they also necessarily have to reject the Quran, which affirms the authority of Jesus and his disciples. So and Muslims generally wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't just throw away their own religion because they want to deny Christianity. So they are left with a few options. And at that point, you can jump in and invite them to Christianity, which is a much better system than Islam. When it comes to charity, for example, Islam also has ideas like giving charity. But with Christianity, we do things that are good because they are good and because God wants us to be good and because we want to be like God. We want to be like Christ. We want to do what is good and abstain from what is evil. That is the Christian way. In Islam, it doesn't quite work that way. In Islam, people do not simply, you know, take the example of what is good and do good for that sake or abstain from evil for the sake of abstaining from evil. It is rather a complete reward versus punishment system. In Islam, if you do something that Allah does not or doesn't want you to do or tells you not to do, you are punished severely and brutally. And the Quran contains very graphic descriptions of what that punishment looks like. Whereas when you do something that Allah wants you to do, you do it because you want to receive rewards from Allah. It is basically like a point-based system where even Muslims who believe in Islam, according to the Islamic belief, are not guaranteed heaven. They are, most people actually, most Muslims, according to the Islamic belief itself, end up going to hell for a while where they have to be punished for all their sins. and so all the things that you all the sins that you commit on earth Allah will pay back in terms of very brutal punishments such as burning and you know burning away your skin and restoring it and burning it again and making a drink hot boiling water and things like that it's like very brutal stuff that is in very sick ways described in the Quran so you want to avoid those punishments and the suffering and want to do good instead so that your your your your goodness points can increase and you can be rewarded by Allah so it is less about simply um doing good for the sake of good or because you love God and abstaining from evil because evil is simply something you know that is that is not good or you dislike it it is uh it is much less human and And if you introduce, if Muslims are introduced to how Christianity is versus how Islam is, they might understand better that this is actually a moral system that is not so arbitrary. And so Islam is more like training, you know, in very cruel ways, training an animal. And whereas Christianity is simply more human. It acknowledges your humanity. It acknowledges your shortcomings. It acknowledges your fallenness. It acknowledges your potential to be good and to be like God in the ways that he allows you to be. And this is simply, this is a much, much more beautiful system, aside from the fact that Christianity is actually supported with evidence in history, whereas Islam is not. Yes, it is a grace-based system, Christianity, unlike any other world religion, including Islam. In fact, the shortest summary I've ever heard of it is three sentences, three short sentences. God created it. We broke it. Jesus fixed it. Jesus fixed our inequity, our sin, by coming to earth and taking our punishment upon himself. And then by trusting in him, we're not only forgiven, but given his righteousness. Whereas in Islam, the only way you can be assured you're going to make it to paradise is to die as a martyr in jihad, according to one of the hadith. In fact, I brought that up on Bill Maher's show 25 years ago. It used to be called Politically Incorrect. I was debating a Muslim on that show. And I said, you know, when Jesus said, what are the greatest two commandments? He said, love God and love your neighbor. When Allah was asked, or when Muhammad was asked the same question, he said, acknowledged that Allah, there's only one God, Allah, and Muhammad is prophet. And the second is to commit jihad for Allah. And it's been put this way, that in Islam, your son dies for Allah. In Christianity, God's son dies for you. And that actually is what literally happens, that Jesus comes into this world as God's son and takes our punishment upon himself. It's a complete system of grace. You don't earn it. You don't achieve it. You receive it. And then out of love for what God has done for you, you can express your love back to God and to other people to bring other people into the kingdom, to make God known, to know God through Jesus and to make him known. That's why we're here to make heaven crowded. Much more with the Apostate Prophet after the break. Don't go anywhere. Students across America are more open to the truth of Christianity than ever before. And Dr. Frank Turek is taking the powerful evidence for God to campuses like UC Berkeley, the University of Georgia, Ohio State, and Alabama, reaching thousands in person and millions more online. But every event now requires costly security to keep students safe. And Cross-Examined never charges students to attend. That's why we urgently need your support. The culture is dark, but hearts are open. Help keep the light of truth shining by donating today at crossexamine.org. That's crossexamine with a D on the end, dot org. Welcome back to I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. With me, Frank Turek on the American Family Radio Network and other stations around the country. I'm with my friend Ridvan Ademir. He's also known as the Apostate Prophet on YouTube. And before we get into a discussion about Israel, Hamas, I'm going to read a couple of passages from the Hamas Charter. This is 1988. Hamas, by the way, is an acronym, and it basically is an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood, and it is in opposition to Jews. It's in opposition to Israel. Here's what the second paragraph says. Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it. just as it obliterated others before it. Also, if you go down to Article 8, and by the way, we're going to put this in the show notes because I always ask people at college campuses who ask me a question about some dispute between Israel and Moss. Have you read the Moss Charter? Have you read the Moss Charter? Have you read the Moss I only had one say yes Just the other night I was at a college campus and the guy said no By the way we going to be at college campuses this coming week We're going to be up at Michigan Tech on the, let me make sure I get these dates right. We're going to be there on the 23rd and then we're going to be at Northern Michigan on the 24th. Also be at a church way up in Houghton, Michigan on the 22nd. All the details on our website. But let me get back to the Abbas Charter. Here is the slogan of the Islamic resistance movement. This is from Article 8 of the Hamas Charter. Allah is the target. The prophet is the model. The Quran is the constitution. Jihad is its path. And death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes. Finally, one other article. This is Article 13 of the Hamas Charter from 1988. Quote, there is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad. So there's no two-state solution. That's a waste of time. There's no conference we can go to that'll work this out. What needs to happen, according to the Moss Charter, is that Islam needs to be imposed on that entire landmass, and all Jews need to be obliterated. Israel needs to be obliterated. Israel will not be recognized. Israel will be driven into the sea. From the river to the sea, they say, Palestine will be free. This is the Amas charter. These folks basically are, I hate to say this, but it's true, they are the new Nazi party. They're trying to obliterate Jews. that's what they say in their charter so ridvan what were you taught as a young man a boy growing up as a muslim about this about jews about israel i was taught the exact same thing that the hamas charter actually teaches in article 7 which is my favorite article of the Hamas Charter. And I would recommend everybody go and read that Hamas Charter because it's so easily accessible. All you have to do is to put Hamas Charter 1988 into Google and it will bring you multiple translations of the very same Hamas Charter and even the original. We'll put it in the show notes. The link is there. There's no excuse now. I got seven in front of me. What does it say? So the end of it is very clear. So it says, that the Islamic resistance movement aspires to the realization of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said, The day of judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews or kill the Jews, when the Jews will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, O Muslim, O servant of Allah or Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Kargit tree, evidently a certain kind of tree, would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews. This is a hadith, a narration that goes back to the so-called Prophet Muhammad. It is very well known, very well authenticated. The majority of Muslims around the world are familiar with this hadith. In fact, whenever the conflict flares up, Muslims around the world will start sharing this as a promise. Hamas has it directly in their constitution, in their charter. The Palestinian Authority, which is supposed to be the reasonable ones, the secular ones, the good ones in the West Bank, they still order their mosques on many Fridays to actually preach this to the masses when they go to the mosque. They did so after October 7, the first or second Friday. They actually read this to the Muslims who were there at the mosque, while globally pretending that they themselves are completely against this whole anti-Semitism and all the terrorism and all that. But this is exactly what I learned as a child. I was in first grade when in school, a little child, when I first was taught over the weekend by our religious community that in the near future there will be a time, which I may or may not witness, where we Muslims will finally have a final war against the Jews and we will kill all the Jews. and even the rocks and the trees will say there is a Jew behind me come and kill him except for one tree called the Kargat tree which was a tree in Muhammad's time that was affiliated with you know Jewish families and all that and that tree will protect them this is what Muslims believe in this is what Muhammad preaches as a Muslim in Germany in a predominantly Christian environment I was taught that I am not to trust or befriend Christians because Christians are we can smile into their faces we can be good to them we can be friendly with them but we shouldn't be friends with them because the Quran forbids it it says do not befriend the Jews and the Christians however the Christians are only the lesser evil in the eyes of the Muslims the Jews are the worst evil that there is and Jews are the enemies of all and the enemies of humanity. And some people will point out that there were times in history where Jews lived in under Islamic rule with relative peace, they were allowed to exist and allowed to have their own community and allowed to do their business and all that. But as for example, Dr. Einat Wolff, who is a very, very important intellectual in Israel, also points out the Islamic perspective was always that the Jews are evil, they are deceptive, they're filthy, they're pathetic. They can continue existing as long as we fully control them and can put them in their place if they misbehave. However, Jews are not allowed to have actual power and independence or power on the same level that we have. If they do have that, then they are a danger and we have to fight and kill them. That's basically the Islamic attitude. The prophecy about killing the Jews is a prophecy that is about the end of time. So it is supposed to be happening in the future. But Hamas, for example, always treats it as something that could always be imminent and that should motivate Palestinians and Muslims everywhere to prepare for a fight against the Jews. I mean, I was, there was a very, I remember it in a funny way, but it's not funny at all. It's pretty messed up. But when I was a child, I was made to watch a movie that was actually very popular and going around at that time. It was sponsored by the Iranian Islamic regime. And it was called something like Zahra's Blue Eyes. And it was a fictional story in which a Palestinian girl named Zahra is kidnapped by the state of Israel, which forcibly removes her beautiful blue eyes, which they handpicked, just to insert them into, just to give them to the child of a prominent Israeli government official because his child has gone blind. And this is the kind of stuff that we were taught. I was also taught in the very same film, which ended with a scene where a suicide bomber goes into an Israeli building and explodes himself. I was taught that this is a legitimate thing to do. As a child, I asked the question, but wait a minute, isn't suicide forbidden? And I was told by my parents and the others that in some cases like this, it can be acceptable because it is a good thing against the Jews, for example. So this is a common sentiment and common teaching about Jews. Were you permitted to ask questions? Why do we hate the Jews? Why is it that the Jews are bad? Why should we do this? Had that come up or was that just assumed you didn't ask questions like that? Or how did that go? It's, you know, it's thinking about the past is always a very interesting thing because you kind of have a little bit of a bias and want to think that you actually had these thoughts in the past. But I struggle to remember if I actually did. I may have asked follow-up questions about why this is the case and why the Jews are so bad and so evil. And the explanation I was basically given is already in the Quran and in the Hadith, in the words of Muhammad, which is that the Jews are the most resilient and the most resistant and the most hateful when it comes to accepting the teachings of Islam, which is not even true. It's complete nonsense. This is probably what Muhammad experienced in his time. But, and they are, Muhammad was, so Muhammad was constantly approached by Jews because he was in Mecca at first, which was a polytheistic Arab place. When he fled Mecca after antagonizing the polytheists more and more, he fled to Medina, which was another city known at that time as Yerthri. And that city was turned into a thriving city by Jewish merchants who were prominent there and who made that city a flourishing city. So he came into a location that was basically dominated and turned into something beautiful by Jews. But he also there established his Islamic leadership and wanted to impose his own beliefs on the Jews, which the Jews wouldn't have. So they would start asking him questions and mocking him or rejecting him, which made him really, really angry. seeing also that they have power there. So he started one by one accusing every single Jewish tribe of something and completely executed one tribe on accusations of treason, another on different accusations, expelled one tribe, completely executed and enslaved the other tribe. And for the other tribe, he killed most of them and turned them into subjects that pay constant protection money to the Muslim community. So this was Muhammad's experience with the Jews in his time. And just by that experience, I guess he inspired and instructed supposedly Allah's perspective in the Quran on how the Jews are. They are resilient, they're smart, they're mischievous, and they won't accept us. Therefore, they are our enemy. Muhammad died too soon before he could form a stricter opinion on the Christians. But with Christians, it also wasn't going into the right direction. So he eventually started insulting and demonizing and vilifying and ordering the subjugation of Christians as well, which is very, very prominently laid out in chapter 9, verse 29 and verse 30 of the Quran, where it says, fight those who do not believe in Allah and the last day and in Allah's messenger and who do not adopt the religion of truth, that is Islam, among the people of the scripture, which means the Jews and the Christians. And fight them until they are subjugated and pay jazya, which is protection money as the mafia takes it. And in the next verse in chapter 30, it then says that the Jews say Ezra is the son of Allah, which no Jew does. and the Christians say the Messiah is the son of Allah. This is what makes them disbelievers. This is why we fight them. May Allah destroy them. Wow, there's much more that we'll talk about with Ridvan Ademir, the apostate prophet. By the way, we have websites now in other languages, including Arabic. We're going to put our Arabic website in the show notes. And there are some videos up there that have to do with Islam. So we want to reach out to Muslims. Anyway, we're back in just a couple of minutes. Don't go anywhere. What is the truth about Hamas and the truth about the Hamas-Israel conflict? We're talking to Ridvan Ademir, the apostate prophet, and just before the break, we were talking about how Islam for many years ever since the Quran from the very beginning 1400 years has taught that the Jews were enemies and the Jews need to be obliterated And Hamas has it in their charter from 1998 that the Jews need to be obliterated So Ridvan give us your overall view of this and particularly, why did Hamas arise in 1988? We've read kind of what their purpose is. What's the way forward here? So it is actually very interesting to analyze or to learn where Hamas comes from in order to understand what exactly is happening right now in the conflict. So Hamas is an offshoot or a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the beginning, before they adopted the name Hamas, this was actually a charity organization. It was an organization that was led by the Muslim Brotherhood, which was in charge of upholding and restoring proper Islamic values in Gaza and the Palestinian territories. In fact, and this is a great misunderstanding that people have, at that point, Israel was actually supportive of the charity organization that turned into Hamas. Because Israel thought that at that time they were fighting the PLO, the current Fatah party or the Palestinian Authority, which was more secular oriented. But I don't want people to misunderstand this. They weren't exactly secular. They were just secular by Islamic standards or by the Islamic world standards. But they were more focused on simply establishing, on reaching Palestinian national goals and establishing a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders with Israel. And they were pretty malicious and pretty rough and they engaged in lots of active terrorism. So Israel was fighting the PLO. Um, when they, what, what Israel saw in this charity movement was that it is an, it is a better alternative to the terrorist PLO and the terrorist leftist organizations that they were fighting with. So Israel supported this, uh, the, the Islamic charity organizations. And this is a mistake that, um, that people or governments make if they don't understand Islam properly. properly. The secular and Jewish leaders in charge of Israel thought, oh, you know, these guys are religious people. They won't be as big of a problem as these leftist terrorists. So, you know, let us help them. Let's help them have more influence and things will get better. However, these Islamic currents in Gaza and the West Bank became more and more angry and hostile because of the actions of the PLO. Around the time of the 80s, the PLO turned more from acts of terrorism toward trying to, at least on an international level, reach some recognition and make deals or concessions with Israel. Among their concessions was to go and attend peace talks and to recognize Israel and expect mutual recognition and also compromise on the borders that they want for the so-called state of Palestine, the Islamists within the Palestinian territories really didn't take kindly to this. They saw this as a betrayal of Islam, of Muslims, of the Muslim community and of the Palestinians. So Hamas basically sprung up and became extremely popular as such a reaction, as a popular Islamic reaction to the secular nationalist PLO, which would make concessions and which didn't care that much about Islamic values. Hamas came and said, okay, we are done with talks. We shall not engage in any peace process. We will fight only for Islam. We will rebuild the caliphate, basically. That was their idea, which was destroyed in the 1920s. And we will never make any concessions with Islam, and we will fight them and we will kill the Jews and restart the Islamic empire. That was the thought that Hamas had. And they actually repeated this again and again and again over the decades. Just recently, Fatih Hamad, who is the official spokesperson in Gaza of Hamas, who is also recognized by the United States as an international terrorist, he gave a speech just several years ago in which he promised to the Palestinian Arabic-speaking people in Arabic and said in very few years we will have achieved two of our main goals. One of them is the complete extinction, the eradication of the cancer of the Jews from the land of Palestine. And the second goal is to reestablish the caliphate and start the Islamic rule and empire over this region. We will be the ones who will start it. And the rest of the Muslim world will then see our power and will join us. So this has been the driving force behind Hamas from the very beginning until this day. They still believe in the very same thing. So why do you think leftists in our country probably has something to do with critical theory that they think anybody who they consider to be oppressed, they're on their side. But why is it that leftists don't understand this? And why don't leftists understand that if Hamas were to take over their jurisdiction, their rights would evaporate, particularly the LGBTQ community would be basically executed. Why don't leftists get this? I often wonder about this myself, and there are many explanations to it. I guess it's kind of related to some self-hate psychology. But it's not only that the Islamic aspect is contradictory, that's a very obvious one, but it's also that these leftists in the West who are against any kind of, you know, nationalism or patriotism or any of that actually supports the Palestinian cause, which in and of itself is an explicitly ethno-nationalist political cause. So you have these leftists and these socialists supporting an ethno-nationalist movement in Palestine because it is oppressed. And they do this often with other nations and peoples where they support these contradictory ideas that they supposedly so much hate when it happens in their own country. Similarly, they have this hostility toward Christianity and Christian values and traditions, but they will go ahead and befriend and support an explicitly Islamist terrorist organization that actually wants to establish a hellish Islamic theocracy where everything that they stand for would be banned and brutally punished. I guess it has to do with a little bit of with thinking that the others our own people are always bad we don't like it we don't like the tradition when it takes place here but these other people they are just being oppressed they are simply being they are being turned into victims they are being oppressed they are less fortunate than us and the only reason that we hate them is just because our bigots over here want us to hate them but we will not hate them we will go and help them and um you you can even put this in their faces very often. I mean, I engage in discussions with progressivists, leftists, with socialists and all that a lot. And you point out to them, hey, are you aware that you are supporting an explicit Islamic, an Islamist organization and that you yourself are completely against any such thing if it happens in your own culture? And it's just, they ignore it. They ignore it. It is, it is, there's so much cognitive dissonance here. It's also very ironic that the very people that they claim to support in Israel, I'm sorry, let me put it another way, the very things that they claim Israel is doing, Hamas is doing. They claim Israel is apartheid when 20% of Israeli citizens are Arabs and many of them are Muslims and they can vote in Israeli elections. They even have a Muslim on the Israeli Supreme Court, but that's not the case in Muslim countries. You can't even be in a Muslim country, in some Muslim countries anyway, if you're a Jew. You can't be in Gaza and be a Jew. You can't have a worship facility as a Jew in Gaza, but you can have a mosque in Israel. So it's exactly the opposite of what people claim to be. It's not Israel that's the apartheid state. It's Gaza that is. And Israel gave that to the Palestinian Liberation Organization back in, I think, 2005. They evacuated it. Since then, $35 billion in support has gone into Gaza, and they could have used that to make it the most amazing resort maybe in the world. And instead, they built tunnels and they built weapons and they built walls and they starved their populace just so they could fight the Jews. How come we don't see that over here, Ridvan? What's our problem? It is very baffling. You know, when you go to Israel or when you look at the statistics, when it comes to Israel, when you look at the surveys and you ask the Arabs living in Israel themselves, so many of the Arabs within Israel are actually supportive of the state of Israel. According to a recent survey where I think this was prior to the October 7 attacks, actually, when Israeli Arabs themselves were asked how they identify themselves, the most common way to identify themselves, according to Israeli Arabs, was an Arab citizen of Israel or an Israeli Arab citizen. something like a palestinian citizen was only secondary as an option that they use as their identity so they are more comfortable identifying as israeli arabs than they are with with anything else the people living there in israel together with israelis are significantly more comfortable with with the state of israel than these these these ignorant people over here who want to make their judgments based on stuff that they hear online. And I would say it's also, there's also a huge war of information taking place. And I talked about this when I went to Israel the first time and I talked to some of the hostage families and the hostage center. You know, people would like to think that the Jews or that Israel is this great genius center where they perfectly know how to manipulate the world and control the flow of information all that these people were desperate talking to me like they have people online trying to correct all the misinformation and trying to present this israeli narrative and they were desperately telling me that um that they are at a loss or for options for things for how they can counter the massive flow of misinformation because on the one hand, it is just Jews. On the other hand, it's like it's over, it's nearly 2 billion Muslims around the world all pushing anti-Israel narratives. And then the left, yes. Ridvan Ademir, ladies and gentlemen, the Apostate Prophet, we've got to have him back on because this conversation is fascinating. Anyway, check him out at Apostate Prophet on YouTube. He's got such great videos up there, such great insights. And don't forget, I'm going to be in the upper peninsula of Michigan this weekend. and on Monday and Tuesday at Universities Day. Check it out and we'll see you here next time. God bless. Dr. Frank Turek is bringing powerful evidence for God to campuses like UC Berkeley, the University of Georgia and Ohio State, reaching thousands in person and millions online. But each event now requires costly security. Your gift helps the light of truth pierce the darkness. Give today at crossexamined.org. you