Is Julian Assange a Muslim? The Australian activist’s religious identity is unclear, raising concerns about his beliefs. Julian Assange is a controversial character who has been in the public eye for over a decade as the creator of Wikileaks, a website that releases secret and classified material from a variety of sources. Assange is presently imprisoned in the UK while awaiting a decision on his extradition to the United States, where he faces espionage and hacking allegations.
Is Julian Assange Muslim or Jewish?
One of the most often asked topics regarding Assange is his religious allegiance. Is he Muslim or Jewish? The answer is neither. Assange describes himself as an agnostic and critic of organized religion. He has also challenged the idea of a monotheistic God as a dictatorial and repressive power. Assange interviewed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, a terrorist organization located in Lebanon, and questioned him, “You have fought against the hegemony of the United States.”
“The idea of a God, or Allah, is the ultimate superpower, thus as a freedom fighter, shouldn’t one of your goals be to free people from the oppressive idea of a monotheistic God?”
Nasrallah said that opposing American hegemony was a religious obligation since morals emanate from God and human values are congruent with the laws of the skies. Despite claims of Jewish lineage, Assange has denied any connection to Judaism. In an interview with The New Statesman, he said, “I’m not Jewish, and there’s no Jewish blood in my family.”
Julian Assange Family’s Ethnicity and Origin
Assange was born Julian Paul Hawkins on July 3, 1971, in Townsville, Queensland, Australia. His mother, Christine Ann Hawkins, is a visual artist, and his father, John Shipton, is an antiwar activist and builder. Assange’s parents parted before he was born, and he did not meet his real father until he was 25 years old. He was reared mostly by his mother and her lover, Brett Assange, who gave him his surname. When Assange was young, his family traveled often, residing in over 30 places throughout Australia. He attended different schools and was homeschooled for a while.
He became interested in computers and hacking at a young age and participated in multiple cyberattacks in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was convicted of hacking in 1996 but got a light sentence. Assange has four children from various partnerships. He married Teresa Assange in 1989 when he was 18 years old, and they had one son called Daniel. They got divorced in 1999.
He also has another son with Sarah Harrison, a former WikiLeaks colleague who assisted him in fleeing to Ecuador’s embassy in London in 2012. He has two additional children with Stella Moris-Smith Robertson, a lawyer who defends him in legal disputes. They were married in 2022 while he was in jail. Assange’s background is mostly European, with elements of Aboriginal Australian descent from his maternal grandmother’s side. He has said that he identifies as Australian and has no other citizenship than his home one. He was awarded Ecuadorian citizenship in 2017, but it was removed in 2021 when the Ecuadorian government canceled his asylum.
