Sheikh Al-Masri describes a Muslim conversion trick

This is from a sermon by Egyptian cleric Mahmoud Al-Masri, which aired on Al-Nas TV on August 10, 2009. I came across it in the comments to a blog post about Taqiyya at Jihad Watch. The video does seem to confirm the claim that Islam teaches that deception is clever and good if it is deployed in the service of Islam. It ends with Al-Masri saying "This was a nice trick by this good Muslim."



To me, the story was morally repugnant. Even if we eliminate the anti-semitism and the threat of death parts, the basic idea of tricking someone into converting is vile to me. I don't think a Christian would be comfortable with having converted someone under such false pretensions. It goes against my basic understanding of the meaning of Christianity.

I wondered if this was a rogue cleric and if posting this video would be like posting a video of Fred Phelps and using it to make a point about what Christians think. So I was googling trying to find out more about Mahmoud al-Masri and found a comment at Israellycool that says that in this video Al-Masri is reciting a poem by Ali Zayn El Abidin ibn Hussein ibn Ali ibn Abi Taleb, the great grand son of Mohammad. If that is true, then this sort of trickery that is repugnant to Christian morality really is part of Islam.