Kuwaiti Singer Announces She is Converting to Judaism

by Hugh Fitzgerald

The astounding story is here: “Kuwaiti singer announces she plans to convert to Judaism,” by Neta Bar, Israel Hayom, February 10, 2021:

In a video that stunned much of the Arab world, the Kuwaiti singer and actress Ibtisam Hamid, known by her stage name Basma al-Kuwaiti, sent shockwaves through that world when she announced Wednesday her intention to renounce Islam and convert to Judaism.

Imagine that you a good Muslim. You know that Muslims are the “best of peoples” (Qur’an 3:110) and non-Muslims the “most vile of created beings.” (98:6) You know that you should not take Jews or Christians as friends, for they are “friends only with each other.” (5:51) You know that you have a duty to conduct violent Jihad, to fight, to kill, to smite at the necks of, to strike terror in the hearts of the Infidels. (e.g., 2:191-193, 4:89, 8:12, 8:60, 9:5, 9:29, 47:4). And the worst of the Infidels are the Jews – to whose faith Ibtisam Hamid has announced she plans to convert. As Robert Spencer notes, “the Qur’an depicts the Jews as inveterately evil and bent on destroying the wellbeing of the Muslims. They are the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82); as fabricating things and falsely ascribing them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181); claiming that Allah’s power is limited (5:64); loving to listen to lies (5:41); disobeying Allah and never observing his commands (5:13); disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them (2:109); feeling pain when others are happy or fortunate (3:120); being arrogant about their being Allah’s beloved people (5:18); devouring people’s wealth by subterfuge (4:161); slandering the true religion and being cursed by Allah (4:46); killing the prophets (2:61); being merciless and heartless (2:74); never keeping their promises or fulfilling their words (2:100); being unrestrained in committing sins (5:79); being cowardly (59:13-14); being miserly (4:53); being transformed into apes and pigs for breaking the Sabbath (2:63-65; 5:59-60; 7:166); and more.

It is one thing to declare one’s unhappiness with aspects of Islam, or to call oneself a “cultural Muslim.” It is quite another to tell the world that you, a Muslim, are choosing to convert to Judaism. It’s scarcely believable.

In a video she posted on Twitter, Hamid said that her decision stemmed from the fact that Islam violates women’s rights and does not treat them with dignity.

Certainly women’s rights are violated in Islam. Husbands are allowed to “beat” their wives if they merely suspect them of disobedience. (4:34) Polygyny is practiced: a Muslim male may have up to four wives, which devalues women. A husband may divorce his wives with a simple recitation of the triple-talaq, while it is more complicated for a wife wanting to divorce her husband; she must go through a procedure called khul’, which includes returning to him her dower (mehr) or something else he may have given her.

In Islam, a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man. A daughter inherits half that of a son. Women in many Muslim lands are forced to cover – in everything from a hijab to a niqab and chador – in order to conceal their dangerous seductiveness from men. In many Muslim countries, male relatives act as guardians of women. Until recently, women in Saudi Arabia could neither drive, nor leave the country without permission of a male relative. In their totality, these rules and attitudes reveal the misogynistic bent of Islam.

But Christianity, just as much as Judaism, upholds the rights of women and teaches the need to treat them with dignity. What led Ibtisam Hamid to choose to convert to Judaism? Was it not the very fact that Judaism represented the furthest she felt she could go to express her disaffection with Islam? Weren’t Jews the very embodiment of “the Other”?

The singer also spoke out against the ruling family of Kuwait, saying “I want to declare my opposition to the Al Sabah family, who reject normalization with Israel, stands against religious freedom in the country and against freedom of speech.”

Of course, Hamid must no longer be living in Kuwait if she can both criticize, and herself publicly leave, Islam, and in addition, attack the country’s ruling family. I assume she is now safe, living either In the most tolerant of Arab states, the United Arab Emirates, or in Europe, or even perhaps in Israel. She is somewhere she can’t be reached by agents of the Al-Sabah family, who might wish to bring her back to Kuwait for a show trial, during which she can tearfully renounce her previous denunciation of the rulers, and also explain she had been “confused and depressed” when she said she was going to convert to Judaism. Otherwise, she is bound to be told, it will go hard not only on her, but on her relatives, and she wouldn’t want that. She is risking her career – other than the UAE, won’t every Arab and Muslim state, stung by her open declaration of apostasy, now prohibit her performances, ban her music from all platforms, destroy her professional career? How long can she withstand such economic pressure?

The media immediately deemed her words as “heresy.” Some, however, found justifications for her words.

“This is a sad day for Islam, and it is not her fault,” one person commented.

“When one does know true Islam, but judges it based on the behavior of some Muslims, it is easy to reject it and leave it. May Allah help people see the true Islam,” another follower wrote.

Sympathy expressed by some of her Facebook followers. One seemed to understand her act of apostasy: “it’s not her fault.” Another defended Islam but explained, in justification of her decision, that she had not seen the “true Islam,” but confused the unacceptable behavior of some Muslims with Islam itself. If she had understood the difference, of course she would not have become an apostate.

Hamid’s announcement comes less than a month after Kuwaiti presenter Mohammad Al-Momen announced that he would be leaving Islam and converting to Christianity, also drawing criticism, even death threats, from the public.

This one-two punch to Muslim sensibilities in Kuwait must surely startle. Here are Kuwaitis who have everything: the first a male TV presenter, the second a female singer and actress. Both are celebrities, both well-paid, with large and loyal followlngs on Facebook. Yet they both chose — shockingly – to publicly leave Islam. It would have been bad enough if they had quietly left Islam and chosen to join – also quietly — another religion. But to announce to the world that they left Islam, one converting to Christianity and the other to Judaism, which is even worse, is simply horrifying. These two apostates are undermining Islam’s claim to be the one true faith, ignoring the Qur’anic punishment for apostasy, suggesting, in the choices they have made, that they do not subscribe to the Qur’anic claim that Muslims are “the best of peoples” and non-Muslims the “most vile of created beings.”

How will this demoralizing spectacle be handled? I think that the Kuwaiti authorities will make sure Mohammad Al-Momen loses his job as a TV presenter, and that Ibtisam Hamid’s music will be banned from Kuwait altogether, “until” they both “recover from their illnesses.” Then those authorities will spread rumors – reporting that both apostates have “for many months” been seeing psychiatrists; their friends and relatives, pressed into service by government officials and clerics, will back up such stories about their recent displays of “mental and emotional distress.” Some government health official will, very sympathetically, express “the government’s deep concern” for the “pain and anguish Mohammad Al-Momen and Ibtisam Hamid clearly have been experiencing,” and offer to “help them to recover with therapy, long rests, and medication.” Many Kuwaitis will take that “sympathy” at face value. And if Al-Momen and Hamid reject that kind offer, they will be regarded as ingrates. There are so many ways to cast doubt on their decisions.

At the same time as the main narrative to be spun in Kuwait will attribute their apostasy to mental confusion, possibly the result of overwork, and the special pressure of careers under the spotlight (the TV presenter, the singer/actress), another explanation can be disseminated through Arab social media. In this narrative, Mossad agents — they are everywhere — had identified the two as unbalanced, and have been grooming both of them for a long time, gradually winning their trust, and slowly turning them away from Islam, one to Christianity and the other to Judaism. There may also be rumors spread on social media of financial rewards “from Zionist agents” awaiting them after their publicly-announced conversions. Should they need asylum, it will be said that the Mossad can also arrange that for them, not just in Israel but in a dozen Western countries. For those diabolical Israelis know how inexplicable and demoralizing such acts of apostasy can be for devout Muslims; it’s a way for the Zionists to undermine the self-assurance and resolve of their Arab enemies. The Kuwaiti authorities must make their diagnosis stick — that the two Kuwaitis, the balance of their minds having been disturbed, had strayed from the straight path of Islam to the wayward paths of Christianity and Judaism. And it will be up to the authorities, using every means at their disposal, to bring them back.

First published in Jihad Watch.