Dan Burmawi@DanBurmawy
I Left Two Religions: Islam and Palestine
I am a convert twice over.
Once, from Islam to Christianity, and once from Palestine to truth.
I rejected Islam at 18, when I realized it was not a divine faith but a political movement, engineered by a 7th-century Arabian warlord who erased my ancestors’ civilization and converted them by force.
But there was another religion I was following, that religion's name was Palestine.
Like Islam, the religion of Palestine has its prophet, Yasser Arafat, wrapped in keffiyeh. Its prophet had companions, the warlords and ideologues of the so-called resistance.
It has its book, not written in ink, but broadcast daily across Arabic media: a scripture of propaganda, martyrdom, half-truths.
And like Islam, it demands global conversion.
This faith doesn’t care for archaeology. It doesn’t care for history. It doesn’t care for Jewish lineage, Jewish exile, Jewish return.
It hijacks the Jewish story and paints the Jews as colonizers in their own homeland. Just like Islam hijacked Judaism and Christianity, Palestinianism hijacked Jewish history and draped it in the robes of Arab grievance.
It teaches its followers to see the world through one lens: victim and oppressor. It casts itself as the eternal victim and the Jew as the eternal criminal.
It has its rituals and prayers: marching in lockstep, the keffiyeh draped like priestly garb, and the chant “Khaybar, Khaybar” echoed like a sacred liturgy of hate.
It draws from an endless reservoir of fury, renewed with every myth, every martyr, every grievance retold as gospel.
Palestinianism is a religion of reverse morality.
This religion shapes the global narrative. It baptizes jihad as resistance. It canonizes jihadists as martyrs. It teaches children to chant death. It trains the world to apologize for Jewish existence.
I left this religion because I saw that supporting Israel was not betrayal, it was repentance.
Repentance from a theology of envy.
Repentance from a politics of death.
Repentance from decades of being told that no truth can exist that contradicts the myth.
I left Palestine because I chose reality.
