The brutal truth about Islam, Hamas, and the culture that produces violence is not an easy subject. It is personal for me. It is painful. And it is impossible to discuss honestly without talking about the people who shaped my life, the people I lost, and the people who showed me another way.

For years, I carried the weight of being rejected by my own family, doubted by governments, and misunderstood by people who had no idea what it meant to leave a world built on fear.

• Yet one woman saw that I was in danger.
• She picked up the phone.
• She opened her home.

And in one of the darkest periods of my life, Sarah Stern gave me something I had almost forgotten existed: safety.

A Home When I Had Nowhere to Go

About 14 years ago, I was not celebrated. I was not a public figure. I was the black sheep. I was isolated, accused, and facing possible deportation from the United States.

• I had spent years fighting terrorism from inside the Hamas world.
• I had gone against my childhood conditioning, my environment, and my own family.
• But much of what I did could not be publicly explained at the time.
• That left me exposed.

People doubted my story. The United States government wanted to deport me.

Then Sarah Stern called.

Sometimes one person’s courage changes the direction of another person’s life.

She wanted to bring me to Congress and honor me. At first, I did not understand why. I asked friends who this woman was and what she wanted from me. But Sarah saw the danger before I fully understood it myself.

She welcomed me into her house during months of sleepless nights. I remember spending Shabbat there. I remember the calm. I remember sleeping deeply for the first time in a very long time.

That experience taught me something bigger than politics. It was not about lobbying, influence, or Capitol Hill strategy.

• It was about the power of motherhood.
• It was about a woman who saw another human being in trouble and decided not to look away.

Real strength does not always shout. Sometimes it opens a door, sets a table, and gives a frightened person a place to rest.

The Brutal Truth About Islam as I Experienced It

When people hear the phrase “the brutal truth about Islam,” they often assume the goal is to insult ordinary Muslims. That’s not the point. The point is to confront the Islamist ideology and violent culture I grew up in, because pretending the problem does not exist only gives it more room to grow.

Growing up in the Hamas world, I saw what I describe as a death cult. Violence was not merely a tactic. It was part of the identity, the language, the worldview, and the social pressure placed on children.

The brutal truth about Islam in its politicized and extremist form is

• It can turn death into a virtue and make hatred sound like holiness.
• It can demand loyalty to an abstract religious or political cause above the life of a child, a neighbor, or even a family member.

I know this is difficult to hear. But difficult truths do not disappear when people refuse to say them.

A culture that teaches children to glorify death will eventually sacrifice its own future.

October 7 made that reality impossible to ignore. Hamas murdered civilians indiscriminately. Jews, Arabs, Christians, foreigners, and anyone else in their path could become a target. Yet instead of collective remorse, there were celebrations. Then, almost immediately, the narrative flipped. The murderers presented themselves as victims.

This inversion is central to the problem.

• The brutal truth about Islam under Islamist movements is not only physical violence.
• It’s also psychological warfare.
• It is the ability to rewrite reality, blame others for self-inflicted destruction, and demand sympathy while refusing responsibility.

Why Victimhood Becomes a Weapon

Victimhood can be real. People can suffer. Families in Gaza have suffered terribly. But suffering does not erase responsibility, and it does not make Hamas innocent.

• Hamas knew exactly what it was doing on October 7.
• It knew Israel would respond.
• It knew Gaza would become a battlefield.
• And it calculated that civilian deaths could be used as a political weapon against Israel.

This is why the brutal truth about Islam as expressed through Hamas cannot be separated from the use of human shields, propaganda, and the exploitation of children. Hamas does not protect civilians first. It uses civilians to protect its military project.

When leaders gamble with children’s lives for political gain, they have already confessed what matters most to them.

• A victim mentality is dangerous because it blocks self-examination.
• It cannot trace suffering back to its source.
• It cannot say, “We made a terrible mistake.” It cannot admit that terrorism brings destruction.

Instead, it blames Israel. Then America. Then the West. Then the entire world. Everyone becomes guilty except the people who planned, celebrated, and carried out the violence.

The brutal truth about Islam in this ideological struggle is that

• False narratives eventually produce real violence.
• Lies are not harmless.
• They prepare people to hate.
• They prepare them to kill.
• And they make it harder for children to imagine a life outside the cycle.

A Family Divided by Violence

This is not abstract for me. My own father publicly disowned me years ago. He said that if someone killed me, he would not seek justice for my death. That is a painful thing to carry. But I still say the same thing: drop the violence.

That is all it takes to begin. Drop the violence. Stop justifying murder. Stop demanding that others die for your cause.

The brutal truth about Islam as I knew it from my Hamas upbringing forced me to make a choice. I could remain loyal to blood ties, tribal expectations, and inherited hatred. Or I could choose life.

I chose life. And that choice came with a price.

Family matters. But no family relationship is worth sacrificing the future of humanity.

After October 7, I had to draw a firm line.

• There comes a point where compromise stops being compassion and becomes surrender.
• We all have relationships that pull on our hearts. A parent. A spouse. A friend. A community.
• But if those relationships demand silence in the face of murder, silence becomes a form of participation.

Sarah Stern became part of the contrast in my life.

• My childhood world taught fear, coercion, and violence.
• She offered protection, dignity, and human kindness.

That contrast widened the crack that had already formed between me and the world I came from.

The Brutal Truth About Islamism’s War Beyond Israel

Israel is not the final target for Islamist extremism. Israel is the immediate enemy because it is there, because it is Jewish, and because it represents survival despite centuries of persecution. But the ambitions of violent Islamist movements do not end at Israel’s borders.

The brutal truth about Islam when it becomes an expansionist political ideology is that it threatens every community that refuses submission. Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, secular people, dissident Muslims, and anyone else who stands outside its control can become enemies.

And history shows something even darker. These movements do not only attack non-Muslims. They turn on one another. Sunni and Shia conflicts have spilled enormous amounts of blood. Competing Islamic powers have repeatedly fought for dominance, often after pursuing a shared enemy.

Violence never stays satisfied. After it destroys the outsider, it searches for someone else to destroy.

Israel is caught in a broader regional struggle. Iran’s Islamic Republic seeks power far beyond Jerusalem. Its ambitions involve the balance of the entire Middle East, including Sunni Muslim societies. That is why Sunni Arab states should understand that cooperation with Israel is not betrayal. It can be a matter of survival.

The brutal truth about Islam in the Islamist political arena is that religious slogans can cover ambitions for power, empire, and control. That does not bring peace. It brings endless conflict dressed up as destiny.

Peace Requires Defeating Hamas

People ask whether there can be peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Peace is a beautiful word. I practice yoga. I believe in inner stillness. I believe in compassion. But peace cannot be built on the permission of terrorists.

There is no meaningful peace while Hamas retains the ability to murder, abduct, indoctrinate, and regroup. The brutal truth about Islam in the Hamas context is that peace language can be used as another weapon when it demands that Israel stop defending itself while Hamas remains committed to its destruction.

First, Hamas must be defeated. Its military power must be dismantled. Its leadership must lose the ability to decide the fate of ordinary people in Gaza. Its propaganda must be challenged wherever it appears.

That does not mean celebrating war. It means recognizing that war was forced on Israel by people who want it erased.

Peace will come after the terror machine is broken, not while it is being protected by slogans.

Israeli soldiers, hostages, grieving families, and civilians living under threat are paying a heavy price. People sitting safely far away should not casually decide that Israel must accept a ceasefire that leaves Hamas free to prepare for the next massacre.

The brutal truth about Islam as Hamas practices it is that it does not interpret weakness as mercy. It interprets weakness as an invitation.

America Must Stand for Reality

America is my country. I am an American citizen. I am loyal to the United States. That is why it is painful to see Americans repeat Hamas propaganda without understanding where it comes from.

Some people demand that I be loyal to “Palestine” as if it were a sovereign country, a religion, a race, or an ancient unified identity. But political labels cannot excuse terrorism. No cause has the right to demand violence from people who reject violence.

The brutal truth about Islam must be faced openly in America, Europe, and every free society. This does not mean abandoning fairness. It means refusing to confuse Islamism with freedom, terrorism with resistance, or Antisemitism with justice.

Words from politicians are not enough. Promises are not enough. Support for Israel must show up in action, in international institutions, in security policy, and in the refusal to reward Hamas for its crimes.

The future of the Middle East cannot rest on the temporary wishes of politicians who may change their minds tomorrow.

Choose Life over Death

I became a traitor in the eyes of Hamas because I reported terrorists and helped save human lives. That was my crime. I refused a death ideology. I refused to hate Jews. I refused to become violent for a cause that treated human beings as disposable.

The brutal truth about Islam in its extremist expression is hard, because it asks people to examine beliefs they may have been taught to never question. But questioning is where freedom begins.

• We need courage.
• We need clarity.
• We need people willing to say that murder is murder, no matter who commits it.
• And we need people who will not abandon Israel when its survival is on the line.

There is still a path forward. But it begins with truth.

• It begins when violence loses its glamour.
• When victimhood loses its power
• When children are no longer sacrificed for the ambitions of armed men

Choose life. Reject lies. Stand against terror. Then peace has a chance to grow.

Sarah N. Stern

Sarah N. Stern is the founder and president of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), a think tank that specializes in the Middle East. She is the author of Saudi Arabia and the Global Terrorist Network (2011).