JERUSALEM: AN ULTRA-ORTHODOX JEWISH FAMILY CONVERTS TO ISLAM AFTER LEAVING THE USA TO MOVE TO ISRAEL

Record ID: 640433

  • Title: JERUSALEM: AN ULTRA-ORTHODOX JEWISH FAMILY CONVERTS TO ISLAM AFTER LEAVING THE USA TO MOVE TO ISRAEL
  • Date: 25th July 2002
  • Summary: (W4) JERUSALEM (FILE) (REUTERS) WIDE OF MOSQUE CLOSE UP OF ISRAELI FLAG WITH MINARET IN BACKGROUND
  • Embargoed: 9th August 2002 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: JERUSALEM
  • City:
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: General,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVACSVAPMSFKL9QK7M58RYZNXABY
  • Story Text: Joseph has become Yusef, the Cohen family has become
    the Khatib family and what was once an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish
    family living in Israel is now a Muslim family living happily
    in an Arab suburb of Jerusalem. This is the unusual story of
    one Jewish family's journey from the United States to Israel;
    a journey that has involved far more than a change of
    nationality.



    A while back Joseph Cohen would have been a regular
    visitor to the wailing wall. As an ultra-Orthodox Jew he
    prayed three times a day facing Jerusalem's Temple Mount.

    Now he is more likely to be found at the al Aqsa mosque.

    He prays five times a day - facing Mecca.

    Until four years ago, Joseph Cohen - or Yusef Khatib as he
    is now known - and his family lived a fairly ordinary life in
    Brooklyn.

    A computer programmer and ardent supporter of the
    religious and political leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, he moved
    with his family to Israel, living first in a Jewish settlement
    in the Gaza Strip and then in a town in southern Israel.

    But the move unsettled the Cohen family.

    The land they found was nothing like what they had
    expected and after several years of disillusionment with the
    society he lived in, a discussion with a virtual Imam in an
    internet chat room led Joseph Cohen to change his name, his
    religion, and a whole way of life for himself and his family.

    The four Khatib children, aged four to 12, were once
    called Ezra, Hasida, Rahamim and Ovadia (after Ovadia Yosef).

    Now they are Abdelaziz, Hesiba, Abdelhamid and Abdallah.

    They live in Abu Tur, an Arab neighbourhood in Jerusalem.

    Khatib says his conversion to Islam was the result of his
    disenchantment with Judaism, the Israeli leadership and the
    Jewish way of life.

    Looking at the people around him he decided that theirs
    was not a world he wanted to inhabit.

    "They are not learning how to better the world. They are
    learning how to better themselves," he says.

    His wife Luna spent many years of her life in Morocco
    where she was surrounded by Arabs of all religions. Her
    decision to convert to Islam came as a great shock to her
    family.

    Khatib's about-turn did not stop at religion. He has also
    embraced the cause of Israel's most radical enemy, the
    Palestinian militant group, Hamas and the former United States
    (U.S.) citizen stoutly defends the Muslim who his erstwhile
    government considers not only a killer but its number one
    enemy - Osama Bin-Laden, the man the U.S. believes was behind
    the attack on the World Trade Centre last September.

    "He is number one. Muslim number one but I don't believe
    that he is responsible for the World Trade Centre," Khatib
    says.

    Khatib says his radical views are the result of first-hand
    experiences in Israel. He says Muslims are repressed and
    mistreated by the Israelis and he believes ultimately that
    Jews should not live in the Holy Land.


    (nc/jg)
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