Young Nonie Darwish slept through one of the most fateful events of her life. Israeli commandos had broken into her home on the Gaza Strip, hoping to find her father, but had found only her mother, the five children, and two maids, all of whom they left unharmed.1

It was January 16, 1956, and Egypt’s President Nasser had just vowed anew to destroy Israel. Nonie’s father, an intelligence officer, organized terrorist raids into Israel, with the murder of civilians, including women and children. Yet in response, Israel tried to spare the innocents. Nonie did not learn of her deliverance until years later, but when she heard the story, it served to confirm her growing conviction that Israel was to be admired, not hated.

When her father was later killed, the family returned to Egypt as celebrities, bereaved survivors of a heroic martyr. Though privileged, she could not ignore the pathologies of her society. Particularly irksome was the status of Muslim women. For one thing, she saw how the practice of polygamy undermined trust among women. A wife was always reluctant to befriend a single woman (including Nonie’s widowed mother) since the husband might see this acquaintance as a potential wife number two—or three or four.2 Nonie also learned of honor killings,3 Qur’anic support for wife-beating,4 the husband’s easy means of divorce,5 brief “pleasure marriages,”6 and such other indignities as virginity verifications, head-to-toe covering, second-class standing in shari‘a courts, and even female genital mutilation.7

In contrast, she admired her two Western schools in Cairo, the private, Catholic, St. Clare’s College8 and the American University, where she “found a respect for knowledge and a level of honesty, simplicity, and appreciation of the truth that [she] found lacking [in her] society.”9 She simply could not help noticing the stark contrast between these Western institutions and the prevailing culture around her, with its 70% illiteracy rate,10 ubiquitous street begging,11 and crippling fatalism.12

In time, she married a Coptic boy, who was first forced to abandon his Orthodox faith and convert to Islam. She followed him to California in 1978, where he joined immigrant family members. Once there, she was astonished by what she found—supermarkets bulging with groceries, warm expressions of affection, self-effacement, humility, and an eagerness to join in volunteer work—all alien to her native Egypt.13 And then she heard her first Christian sermon: Televised one Sunday morning, it spoke of love in I Corinthians 13.

Nonie immediately resolved to visit that church, and on the following Sunday, in the pew, she learned the shocking truth that Christians were supposed to love even their enemies, a command alien to the Muslim mindset. For Nonie and her husband, it was revolutionary: “I was faced with a challenge, nothing less than the choice between love and hate.” She adds, “Ever since that day our lives have been blessed.”14

Choosing love, Nonie has directed much compassion toward the nation that killed her soldier father, but whose doctors later saved her brother’s life when he was felled with a horrendous stroke.15 She now heads Arabs for Israel,16 at no little risk to her life. And though her special cause is Israel’s safety, she also counts her efforts an act of love toward Arabs, who have been consumed and sidetracked by hatred for this Jewish country in their midst. She speaks of “the beautiful, haunting eyes of the Arab children, men and women who long for a better life,” and so this “infidel” does what she can to introduce them to the charitable mindset described by the Apostle Paul two millennia ago. Indeed, for her, it is more than a matter of love versus hate; it is nothing less than a question of life versus death.
 
Footnotes:
 
1  Nonie Darwish, Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror (New York: Sentinel, 2006), 11.
 
2  Ibid., 26.
 
3  Ibid., 40.
 
4  Ibid., 73-74.
 
5  Ibid., 75.
 
6  Ibid., 68.
 
7  Ibid., 66.
 
8  Ibid., 18.
 
9  Ibid., 48.
 
10  Ibid., 135.
 
11  Ibid.,19.
 
12  Ibid.,35.
 
13  Ibid., 115-125. Since then, she has been equally astonished at Americans who hold their own nation in contempt.
 
14  Ibid., 158-160.
 
15  Israel’s Hadassah Hospital was the unanimous choice of his attending physicians in Egypt.
 
16  For more information, see Arabs for Israel Website, http://www.arabsforisrael.com (accessed May 14, 2008).
 
First Baptist Church of Perryville is located at 4800 West Pulaski Highway, Perryville,  MD