the silent witness of charity and good moral lives of several
Christians that his family always seemed to have as
neighbors. When he was seven, one Christian neighbor gave
him a cross, a gift which he cherished for the next eight
years of his life. A student of history and philosophy, Daniel
began an intense study of his Islamic faith, trying to answer
the question of why his Muslim brothers in Northern Iraq
did not seem to notice or care about the suffering, agony,
and genocide of their Kurdish Muslim brothers. In time, his
study led him to the foot of the Cross — to the realization
that the God of the Universe does indeed desire an intimate
relationship with man, and that He did, in fact, send His Son
to dwell among us. In 1998, Daniel was received into the
Catholic Church by Father William Most.
My own study of Islam began in1980, when I first read
the Koran at the invitation of Palestinian and Saudi Muslims
who were trying to convert me. My interest in Islam was
fueled by my family history: my grandparents, who were
Christians, grew up among Muslims in the Ottoman Empire
and came to the United States in1919 as that empire was
collapsing. I read widely in Muslim sources for two decades,
and so was not surprised on September 11, 2001, when
radical Islam brought death and ruin to our shores. In order
to explain how core elements of Islam can have this kind of
devastating impact on the spirit of humanity, I wrote Islam
Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest
Growing Faith (San Francisco: Encounter Books,2002), a
book written for a secular audience and which quickly
became a bestseller. I followed up that book with an indepth
study of jihad, Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still