Go East, Young Man -- to Certain Death

A gay Palestinian convert to Christianity finds himself about to be deported from Canada:

“My moment arrived in an Israeli jail, after I was arrested for illegally crossing the border, escaping from yet another argument with my family and the violence of my father. I was looking for answers to questions when and where I least expected them,” he wrote.

Comparing his experience to the conversion of Paul the Apostle on the road to Damascus, Calvin wrote, “It was in an Israeli jail where the doubts I had about everything I had ever been taught were finally silenced. Another man, a Palestinian man, hurt me in a way I could never have imagined, in a way that just isn’t talked about in our society.”

In previous interviews, Calvin said directly that he was raped by a Muslim inmate.

“If that was unexpected, that was nothing compared to what came next. The Israelis who worked in the prison – ‘the Jews’ – looked after me and took care of me, making sure the story never got out to those who would use it against me,” he wrote. “The Palestinians I had been taught to die for had hurt and abandoned me while the Israelis I had been taught to kill acted with compassion and helped me heal.”

After this experience, he began his conversion process, “opening my eyes and heart to a religion that denounced violence and hatred.”

Calvin, 24, recounted that when his father learned he wanted to abandon Islam, he tried to stab him. Later, his father beat him and had him arrested.

After he was released, Calvin got a scholarship at a Christian college in Canada, “a country where no one was going to kill me for who I was, what I believed, and whom I loved. Isn’t that what everyone deserves?”

Calvin said his asylum request has been rejected by the Canadian government and he’s now facing deportation, which he believes will constitute a mortal danger for him.

Calvin — his conversion name — is reportedly the son of “a prominent family of Hamas-backers.”

I can’t imagine that Ottawa will really go through with deporting him, which would clearly be a death sentence on three counts — but you never know how or why bureaucrats decide the things they do.