My Year Inside Radical Islam

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

  Overlooking the nuances of the Sufi desire for the annihilation of self in service of God, the pamphlet declared that the Naqshbandis disregarded a core tenet of Islam, that Allah is the only truth. The book The Naqshbandi Way stated, “Whoever recites Bismillaah and the verses Amana’r-Rasul until the end, even a single time will attain a high rank and a great position. . . . He will get what the Prophets and Saints could not get, and will arrive at the stage of Abu Yazid Al-Bistami, the Imam of the order who said: ‘I am the Truth (al-Haqq).’ ”

  The pamphlet responded in a rage:The above statement “I am the Truth”—is a clear example of Shirk (association) in the aspect of the Names and Attributes of Allaah, since Al-Haqq in the definite form, is one of Allaah’s Unique attributes and is not shared by any created being or thing unless preceded by the prefix ‘Abd meaning “Slave of ” or “Servant of”. (In fact the Mystic al-Hallaaj was publicly executed as an apostate for daring to openly claim divinity in his infamous pronouncement “Anal-Haqq—I am the Truth”).

  This was the first time I had seen another Muslim laud the execution of al-Hallaj. Until then, I was always told that al-Hallaj’s proclamation was deeply misunderstood by the authorities who killed him. (Although I would later learn that the real reasons behind al-Hallaj’s execution are likely more complex than the Sufi narrative holds, in this instance both the Naqshbandis and their critic accepted the same set of facts.)

  I glanced quickly through the rest of the pamphlet. I saw that the Naqshbandis were condemned for believing that Allah was everywhere, rather than being only above in the heavens; for believing that Muslims and non-Muslims are equal; and for believing that there is hidden knowledge within Islam.

  I had nothing but good feelings toward the Muslims with whom I had taken my shahadah. They were men of intense faith. When I spent time with them in Italy, they seemed to strike a rare balance: rejecting Western civilization’s materialism and licentiousness but remaining skeptical of the extremes of fundamentalism. But I took two clear messages from Salim Morgan’s Web site. The first was that I was not to speak well of the men who were present at my shahadah. The second lesson was more general, but just as unmistakable: I needed to watch what I said.

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was one of the first steps in my indoctrination. When I was a campus activist at Wake Forest, I was always eager to speak against injustice, and often considered myself courageous when I did. But my approach at Al Haramain was the opposite. I recognized that disagreeing with prevailing religious sentiments could stigmatize me. My approach, starting with my first week on the job, was to avoid making waves, to try to understand where the others were coming from, and to emphasize our religious commonality rather than argue over differences.

  But in December of 1998, thinking and believing like a Wahhabi seemed far removed from who I was. It may even have seemed inconceivable.

  I was fascinated by how my coworkers started as average Caucasian high school students who grew up in liberal Ashland and eventually grew into Islamic fundamentalists. Although I would eventually come to know Dennis Geren the best, I learned a lot about Dawood and Charlie Jones early on.

  At times Dawood’s conservative views on Islam horrified me, but over time I came to look up to him as someone with a strong understanding of the faith, an understanding that was reflected in his practice. Like me, Dawood was an Ashland High School alum; he graduated in the early 1980s. His main passion in high school was football, and he still had the body of an athlete. Dawood once told me about his flippant attitude toward high school classes: he claimed that he told his teachers to let him know if his grade dipped below a C-. As long as he had at least a C-, he wouldn’t give any thought to schoolwork.

  Charlie had also graduated from Ashland High. I gathered that he and Dawood went to high school around the same time and had been friends. Charlie never went to college; he was ineligible for student loans because he refused to register for the Selective Service, which would make him eligible for the draft. He wouldn’t register because he found America’s past too sordid.

  Charlie was an avid and impressive student of military history, and he often spoke about how he wished he could go to college, get a degree, and become a high school history teacher. But whenever he mentioned this, the specter of not registering for Selective Service returned. “Why do they have to stop me from going to college?” he would ask. “I leave the government alone. I don’t wish it any harm. Why can’t the government leave me alone?”

  Often he would follow this up by talking about how disappointed he was in this country. “I would love to have lived in an honorable country, ” Charlie would say while nodding his head. “I wish I could be proud of my country and serve in the military. But when I read about the things that the government did to the Native Americans, when I read about how it stole their land and slaughtered them, I know that I can’t be part of a military that did all that.”

  His bitterness was palpable. Charlie felt that if the U.S. government hadn’t been such a disappointment, his life would be different. He could have been a soldier, a college graduate, a military historian. As his emotional problems grew, Charlie would cling more tightly to the idea that had the government not let him down, his life would be far better, his problems more manageable.

  It was Pete who turned Charlie and Dawood to Islam. They had met Pete when his car had broken down on one of southern Oregon’s long and lonely roads. As Charlie and Dawood were driving along, Pete came running from out of nowhere, trying to flag down their car. He needed help.

  Charlie said that Pete was speaking quickly and they could barely understand his thick accent. They thought at the time that he was Mexican. As with so many seemingly chance events in our lives, this encounter had profound consequences for Charlie and Dawood. Eventually they not only adopted Pete as a friend, but adopted his religion as well.

  I told Charlie that I wanted to get the office caught up on its six-month backlog of e-mail messages. He nodded in his peculiar way. First he bobbed his head, then his blue eyes widened expressively, as though he had a hidden thought that he refused to share. Charlie then paused, pursed his lips, and bobbed his head again. When I later learned about Charlie’s emotional problems, they cast his strange nods in a different light.

  I spent the next day and a half answering our e-mail backlog. I spotted a message about W. D. Muhammad and read it with interest, since the reforms he had undertaken to bring his followers in line with mainstream Islam had figured prominently in my college honors thesis. Like the discussion of the Naqshbandis on Salim Morgan’s Web site, the e-mail turned out to be a vitriolic attack that cast nuance to the wind.

  The e-mail discussed the rise of pseudo-Islamic cults in the twentieth century, including the Nation of Islam. In doing so, it compared W. D. Muhammad to Louis Farrakhan and Rashad Khalifa, saying that all three men “have deceived many and are enjoying their present lives.” (I found the assertion that Khalifa was enjoying his present life odd, since his controversial teachings got him killed by Muslim fundamentalists in 1990. His inclusion may have been a deliberate warning.)

  The e-mail included more than a dozen quotes designed to show W. D. Muhammad’s heresy. For starters, it claimed that W. D. Muhammad had publicly declared himself to be the manifestation of God:Yes, I myself am an Immaculate Conception. You say, “This man is crazy.” No, I’m not crazy. . . . After we explain it to you, you’ll know that I’m not crazy. The world has just been in darkness. I can truthfully say that My physical father was not My father. I have never had a physical father. . . . You say, “Who is your father?” Speaking in the language of the New Testament, My Father is God. . . . I am the Manifestation of God. . . . All praise is due to Allah.

  By themselves, these words seemed crazy, even blasphemous. But one hallmark of African-American religious rhetoric was the extended metaphor—one that seems outlandish at first, but becomes clearly correct as the speaker fleshes it out. I assumed that the author of
the e-mail was trying to make his readers take one of W. D. Muhammad’s metaphorical statements literally. I was also amused that the e-mail capitalized the word My in W. D. Muhammad’s statement to reinforce the impression that he was claiming divinity.

  I was equally puzzled by the other quotes allegedly showing W. D. Muhammad’s heresy. He once spoke against polygamy, stating: “The teaching of Muhammad and the teaching of the Qur’an is that ‘one is better for you if you but knew.’ No other Prophet did this for the polygamist mankind. It was Prophet Muhammad who worked against polygamy.” What was wrong with saying that one wife is better than multiple wives?

  W. D. Muhammad had also said that Christians didn’t need to follow Islam: “I don’t feel that all Christians have to have my religion to improve their lives. . . . I feel that some Christians are living very good lives. They have very good morals, they have a good sense of direction and I wouldn’t want to disturb that for them.” In the view of the e-mail’s author, this offense was compounded by W. D. Muhammad’s statement, “I have no problems with the Pope; I respect him and honor him.”

  The e-mail suggested that for these minor offenses, W. D. Muhammad was at best a heretic. Disturbed by the tone used in addressing a man who had been responsible for bringing so many former Nation of Islam members to true Islam, I asked Charlie Jones about it.

  “The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said that there will be seventy-three divisions of Islam,” Charlie said. “All these except one will be paths to the hellfire. You need to be very careful that your faith doesn’t stray from the Straight Path.” He paused, nodding. “If W. D. Muhammad is misleading other Muslims, he needs to be corrected.”

  “But it’s so vitriolic. They’re saying that W. D. Muhammad isn’t even a Muslim because they disagree with some things he’s said.” I wasn’t arguing the substance; I knew better than to defend his statements. The only option left was protesting the tone.

  Charlie shrugged. It didn’t disturb him.

  Later I talked with Dawood about the attacks on W. D. Muhammad. He replied in a loud, unwavering voice. “W. D. Muhammad needs to be exposed. All I can say is that this guy let his daughter marry a Christian.” Dawood laughed contemptuously, as though this fact took W. D. Muhammad to a place where no defense would dare to tread.

  Although I was skeptical of the attacks on W. D. Muhammad, I had already learned to watch what I said, and to be cautious of praising or defending Muslims whom I had once admired.

  Of all the people at Al Haramain, Pete was initially the one I felt most drawn to. Although I was learning to watch what I said in daily life at the office, Pete made me feel comfortable. His ability to do so was part of the remarkable Social skills that I sensed soon after meeting him.

  On the day that Pete convinced me to apply for a job at Al Haramain, he gestured at the rippling, tree-covered mountains that surrounded us. Unlike Sheikh Hassan, who saw homosexuals reflected in the hills, Pete was looking at the same mountains as me. “Why did we both come to Islam?” he had mused. “I could make so much more money if I weren’t Muslim, if I just threw myself into business and didn’t worry about how Allah was watching me. But, bro, something brought both of us to this faith, and there’s a reason for that.”

  Although born into Iran’s Shia Islam, Pete had converted to Sunni Islam somewhere along the way. I never learned exactly why Sunni Islam, and in particular Wahhabism, appealed to Pete. He had left Iran around the time of the revolution. In the early 1980s Pete was known as Falcon, a long-haired young man who was a committed environmental activist. His enthusiasm for the environment remained, reflected in his passion for his tree-care business. Pete once told my dad that he started to become serious about Islam when his mother was sick and he prayed to Allah to make her well. Pete regarded her subsequent recovery as miraculous. After that, Pete said, he decided to take his religion more seriously.

  I would find Pete increasingly difficult to figure out during my time at Al Haramain. He had an activist side that I could identify with, but there was another side as well. He was friends with the local rabbis; years later, when Pete’s legal troubles came, a local rabbi would be his biggest defender. Pete had taken part in local meditation groups where people, including Jews and Muslims, would pray together for peace. But he would just as readily derisively refer to Rand McNally, which produced maps and atlases, as a “real yahoodi company”—that is, a sinister Jewish company. He would similarly refer to non-Muslims derogatorily as kufar, infidels, and make clear his belief in their inferiority. I would later see his eyes light up with belief when confronted with anti-Semitic conspiracy yarns.

  Pete had some progressive activist impulses, but coupled them with the exact opposite impulses, too. His own family was Shia, yet Al Haramain would distribute books at the Musalla with the provocative title The Difference Between the Shee’ah and the Muslims, along with booklets alleging that Shia Islam was part of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy the faith. Thing is, Pete seemed perfectly sincere at both ends. He seemed as sincere about interfaith dialogue as he did when he busied himself learning about Jewish conspiracies. He seemed sincere while speaking of Islam’s tolerance and also while launching verbal assaults on non-Muslims.

  I’ve given a lot of thought over the years to what Pete Seda actually stood for. The answer isn’t entirely clear. He may have been a simple con man. Or perhaps, in his fits of schizophrenic passion, he was sincere the entire time despite the apparent contradictions. This is one part of the puzzle that nobody has solved, even though there are now many strong views on the matter.

  While Amy was in town for Christmas break, I shared all that I loved about Ashland with her. We hiked the trails above town, walked through Lithia Park hand in hand, went to my favorite restaurants. But she had to return to North Carolina a few short days after I began work. Before she left town, I broke up with her.

  We were in my room, sitting on the bed. It was Amy’s last night here.

  For days, I had been asking myself where our relationship was going now that I had graduated from college and would be living three thousand miles from her. I didn’t know if it could survive. Not only had all of my long-distance relationships failed, but each had caused great pain in the process. I ran the fingers of my right hand through Amy’s long hair, leaned in, and kissed her gently on the lips. I loved Amy.

  I took a deep breath before speaking. “I love you, Amy,” I said. “And you love me. But I’m worried about what will happen now that I’ve graduated from college. We’re going to be three thousand miles apart.”

  Amy nodded, her eyes downcast. This had been on her mind, too.

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I had conflicting feelings, but my biggest fear was of a long-distance relationship where we felt bound to each other—but never saw each other, didn’t know where we were headed, and where our interactions became increasingly tense as we struggled against the inevitable fate of such arrangements. “I’ve been in long-distance relationships before,” I said, “and they’re tough. They’re tough because of all the time apart, because of the uncertainty. I’m worried that this won’t work.”

  Amy spoke no words, but her expressive face said everything. She had the same worries, the same concerns. “I think the only way this’ll work is if we know where we’re headed,” I said. “I think we either need to get engaged or break up.”

  I didn’t know what I would say to Amy when we sat down to discuss this. And I still wasn’t entirely sure where I was headed. Part of me wanted to propose to her right there. But we had been together for less than a year, and were both so young. That would be crazy— wouldn’t it?

  So we broke up. Afterward, we held each other in a long, tight, sad embrace. I could tell that Amy was devastated, and there was nothing I could say to make it better.

  I felt the same way.

  Early in my time on the job, Pete would often come by the office to chat with me. He would talk to me about work, then throw in some lessons about Islam and li
fe. Pete was obviously trying to foster a mentor relationshipwith me. And I did see him as a bit of a mentor, but also as a bit of a clown.

  I thought Pete’s fascination with plural marriage fell on the clown side of the ledger. After work one day, Pete sat in the office with me, expounding about how wonderful it was that Islam allows you to have more than one wife. I had heard this before, and it was somewhat less entertaining than the first time around.

  Then Pete surprised me. “Let me tell you, though,” he said, “it can be a real problem when you have a young wife and also wives who are older. The older wives will feel threatened by the young one and gang up on her.”

  “You have more than one wife?” I asked.

  Pete smiled broadly. This was a point of pride. “I have two wives,” he said. “I recently had a third wife from Persia. She was a Zoroastrian, they’re a religious group that worships the sun. But since they only believe in one god, she was legal for me to marry under Islamic law.” His smile broadened. When I didn’t say anything, he continued the story. “But she was younger than my other two wives, and they’d always gang up against her. Eventually I had to divorce her because of them.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. I had no idea that Pete was no mere advocate of plural marriage, but also a practitioner. I would later learn, from other members of the Muslim community, that the history of Pete’s wives was even more sordid than he let on in this conversation.