My Year Inside Radical Islam

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

  I was told that his first wife was an American woman whom Pete had converted to Islam. She was the mother of Yunus and Yusuf. At some point she divorced Pete and returned to Christianity. Pete then married a woman from Morocco who left him after about a year, supposedly because she was horrified when Pete told her that he wanted four wives. After a brief marriage to a woman from Seattle, Pete went to Iran to marry a Persian woman—only he married a Russian immigrant before the trip to Iran. Pete’s Persian wife was probably surprised when she landed in Ashland, only to find that another wife was already there. Sometime after that, Pete took on his young Zoroastrian wife.

  Nor did things end there. After his other two wives managed to push the Zoroastrian away, Pete had the audacity to find her a new husband and hold the wedding in his house. The Russian left Pete soon thereafter, but Pete’s Persian wife wouldn’t have him to herself for long. Pete soon found another wife, a college student from a southern Oregon town called Grants Pass.

  So Pete had no fewer than seven wives over the course of his life, at least four of whom were involved in a plural marriage.

  But I didn’t know any of this at the time. And, as was always the case with Pete, he quickly veered to another topic.

  As I continued to pore through Al Haramain’s backlog of e-mail, I saw that Muslims and non-Muslims often wrote with questions about Islam. We should be ready to answer these questions quickly, I thought. We should try to become a recognized clearinghouse of information on Islam, one that people can turn to when they have inquiries.

  One of the e-mail messages in the inbox said, “I’m a SOU [Southern Oregon University, a college located in Ashland] student and I’m writing a paper about infibulation. I know that this is practiced in a lot of Muslim countries, especially in Africa. Is infibulation required by Islam?”

  Infibulation is a severe form of female genital mutilation that involves the removal of all or part of the clitoris, removal of all or part of the labia minora, and cutting of the labia majora. After the procedure, raw surfaces are created which are often stitched together to form a cover over the vagina, with only a small hole left where urine and menstrual blood can pour out.

  The e-mail had been sent over a month ago, but hopefully the writer was still working on his paper. I relished the opportunity to educate non-Muslimsabout how brutal things done in the name of Islam had no real connection to the faith.

  I sent back an e-mail telling the writer that it was important to distinguish between true Islam and cultural practices. Female genital mutilation is not prescribed by the faith, and is in fact brutal. I included a quote from a human rights group’s Web site that said that Muslim and Christian tribes in Africa practice female genital mutilation, but that the practice is rooted in culture rather than faith.

  I got an e-mail from the writer a few hours later thanking me. I didn’t give the exchange much thought until I came in to work a couple of days later and Dennis Geren had a grave look on his face. I addressed him with the traditional Muslim greeting: “Assalaamu ’alaykum.”

  “Wa alaykum salaam,” Dennis said. “Bro, Dawood was not happy with your e-mail.”

  “What e-mail?”

  “You sent out an e-mail about infibulation. Dawood was very upset. Pete thought it wasn’t a big problem, just a mistake that you made because you’re new and enthusiastic.”

  My mind raced back to the exchange. I was already on guard at work, knowing the kind of condemnations that “deviants” face. But I couldn’t think of any problems with what I had written. “Well,” I stammered, “what was wrong with it?”

  “Basically, you and I aren’t in a position to issue fatwas on our own. We shouldn’t issue rulings about complex areas of Islamic law.”

  I gave a quizzical look but said nothing. Removing a woman’s vulva is a complex area of Islamic law? I thought. But debating, I realized, would have been futile. Dennis had been told by Pete and Dawood—two men who had been serious Muslims far longer than either of us—that my e-mail shouldn’t have been sent. He wasn’t going to argue with them.

  Dennis added, almost apologetically, “Isn’t infibulation where they actually take out the whole vulva?”

  “Yeah.”

  He cringed. “That’s so disgusting.”

  But, of course, we were not to speak against it publicly.

  Dennis’s warning wasn’t the last I would hear of that e-mail. Pete took me aside later that day. He made me feel more comfortable than Dennis had, as he was gentle and didn’t seem reproachful. Instead, it seemed that his main goal was helping me to learn proper Islamic conduct.

  I had signed my e-mail “Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Al Haramain Islamic Foundation.” Pete told me I shouldn’t do that. “That way,” he said, “if you send out an e-mail that says something crazy, it’ll just have your name and not Al Haramain’s.”

  I nodded. That, at least, made sense.

  Then, Pete addressed the substance of the e-mail. “Bro,” he said, “there are a bunch of sheikhs in Saudi Arabia just waiting to answer questions like that. We can send them a question and they’ll sit around for a whole day discussing it. So if someone sends you a question about Islam in the future, you don’t even have to try to answer it. We can take the question, send it to Saudi Arabia, and they’ll get back to us with the right answer.”

  I was still puzzled that the prevailing view was that I shouldn’t speak out on a subject like infibulation, which seemed glaringly obvious. But the objection to my e-mail—at least, the objection that had been relayed to me—was not that my coworkers believed in infibulation. Rather, it was that I wasn’t qualified to issue an Islamic ruling.

  Perhaps the best course is more study, I thought.

  But I already sensed that no matter how much I studied, I’d never be qualified to issue these rulings in the eyes of my coworkers unless my interpretation of Islam squared with theirs. To them, being qualified to speak didn’t just mean that you knew enough. It meant that you agreed with them.

  As I studied more, I discovered more restrictions that I never knew existed. Ramadan had just begun, and one day I read a wire story about it in the local newspaper, the Ashland Daily Tidings. The story mentioned that during the fast, Muslims refrain from food, drink, sexual intercourse, and listening to music during the day.

  I had never heard of this last restriction. When I got in to work I asked Dawood about it. “Practicing Muslims shouldn’t listen to music at all,” he said.

  “What?” Immediately I regretted that I had asked the question.

  “Yes,” Dawood said. “The Prophet, peace be upon him, spoke about this issue directly. It has nothing to do with Ramadan. We shouldn’t be listening to music, period.”

  I must have looked skeptical because Dawood came into the office half an hour later carrying a slim hardcover book, Muhammad bin Jamil Zino’s Islamic Guidelines for Individual and Social Reform. This was the first time I saw the book, but it wouldn’t be the last. Dawood had put a yellow tab on one of the pages. He handed the volume to me. “If you have doubts about the harms of music, you should read this. It explains the Islamic position.”

  I waited until Dawood left the office, then looked at the tabbed section:ISLAMIC RULINGS ON MUSIC AND SONGS1. Allah the Exalted says:“And of mankind is he who purchases idle discourse (like music, singing, etc.) to mislead (men) from the path of Allah without knowledge, and takes it by way of mockery.” (31:6)

  Many interpreters of the Qur’an said that the idle discourse in this verse means songs. Ibn Mas‘ud also said that it is songs. Al-Hasan Al-Basri also said it means songs and music playing.

  2. Allah the Exalted said addressing the Satan:“And befool them whom you can with your voice (songs, music and any other call for disobedience) . . .”

  3. The Prophet said:“There shall be a portion of my nation who will consider adultery, silk (for men), wine and music permissible.” (Bukhari and Abu Dawud).

  This means that some people would not consider adultery,
wine, silk wearing and music unlawful though none of them has ever been made lawful. An instrument of music is an instrument which gives a tune to dancing—flute, violin, drums and bells etc. The Prophet said:

  “Bells are musical instruments of the Satan.” (Muslim).

  The bells are abominable instruments which the Arabs used to play and hang on to the camel necks. This type of bell looked like that of the Christians. Bell sound can be replaced by the sound of the nightingale in the door-bells etc.

  4. Imam As-Shafi‘i in his Book of Rulings said: “Singing is an abominable amusement and whoever gives much importance is a fool and his testimony should be rejected”.

  My head swam when I read this. I read it a second time, then a third. As when I first heard Sheikh Hassan’s khutbah, the unfamiliar style of argument overwhelmed me. I went back over the passage, trying to parse the evidence.

  The first Qur’anic verse said: “And of mankind is he who purchases idle discourse (like music, singing, etc.) to mislead (men) from the path of Allah without knowledge, and takes it by way of mockery.” At the time, I had little knowledge of Arabic. But the translation suggested that the Qur’an itself didn’t say that music could mislead men from the path of Allah. If it had said this, the author wouldn’t have put the statement in parentheses, and wouldn’t have noted that many interpreters of the Qur’an believed that the phrase “idle discourse” meant songs.

  I looked at the next verse: “And befool them whom you can with your voice (songs, music and any other call for disobedience) . . .” Again, “songs” was the author’s addition rather than anything from the Qur’an.

  I turned to the third proof, the hadith that read: “There shall be a portion of my nation who will consider adultery, silk (for men), wine and music permissible.” This was trickier. I started to consider it—then abruptly stopped. What was the point? I couldn’t debate with the book. And what would happen if I tried to debate with Dawood? He would say that I was wrong, and would refer me to the writings of one scholar after another who agreed with him. Just as Sheikh Hassan didn’t engage al-Husein when they debated, Dawood was unlikely to engage me in an actual debate.

  Dawood reentered the office a few minutes later. “Well, what do you think?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t know about that before.” I didn’t say whether I would comply with this ruling. At the time, it seemed unfathomable that I would.

  Every day during Ramadan we fasted until the sun’s disk was hidden by the horizon. I would sit on the couch in the Musalla’s living room, watching as the blue shade of twilight gradually covered the valley. It was a cold winter and there was usually a fire in the woodstove near the kitchen.

  As dusk settled, most of Ashland’s Muslims came to the Musalla to break their fast. We were often joined by Muslims from surrounding areas, like Klamath Falls and Northern California. After a day of refraining from food and drink, the first sustenance to enter our mouths would be buttermilk and dates from Saudi Arabia. I was told that a hadith said it was best to break the fast with dates.

  My first sip of buttermilk would be slow. I’d let my taste buds absorb the sour yet nourishing taste before taking my first bite of date. All the Muslim men would sit on the floor together as the smell of wood smoke filled the room. The women were downstairs as usual, out of sight.

  Sheikh Hassan visited us from California early in the Islamic holy month. He wore a white robe. I noticed the great deference the other Muslims had toward him, like he was royalty. After exchanging greetings with the others, Sheikh Hassan sat cross-legged near me, looking at the communal plate of food on the floor with a vague, aloof smile.

  The treatment he received made clear that Sheikh Hassan wasn’t used to being challenged, and I couldn’t imagine that the debate with al-Husein had left a good taste in his mouth. So I didn’t say anything to Sheikh Hassan when he sat down. A couple of other Muslims started talking to him; I didn’t greet him, and he didn’t greet me.

  But then Pete drew me to Sheikh Hassan’s attention. “Ya sheikh,2 look who’s here,” Pete said, pointing at me. “Daveed is working for us. He’s become a Muslim now. Now he’s on our side.”

  I smiled and nodded at the sheikh. My first thought was that Pete’s words were incorrect. It wasn’t that I became a Muslim after my first encounter with Sheikh Hassan. I had been a Muslim then, as I was now. But I thought of how these guys viewed the Naqshbandis, how they viewed W. D. Muhammad—and I realized that they probably thought I wasn’t Muslim when Sheikh Hassan first met me.

  Sheikh Hassan smiled. He had a peculiar smile, one that simultaneously reflected humility in the face of the Almighty and a haughtiness toward us mere mortals. “I thought about you recently,” he said in a soft voice.

  I nodded. Although I didn’t inquire about what Sheikh Hassan’s thoughts had been, I had my guesses. But, as Pete had said, I was Muslim now and on Sheikh Hassan’s side.

  I received a small package from Amy in early January. After I pulled it out of the mailbox, I ran to my room and eagerly ripped it open. It had all the photos that Amy took while visiting me in Oregon. Before flipping through them, I grabbed the letter that Amy had written on lined notebook paper. Even though we were no longer together, I was anxious to read it. It reminded me of the anticipation I felt years ago, when my first girlfriend sent me my first love letter.

  Amy’s letter said:Daveed—Beloved,

  These are both rolls of film. And some wonderful memories. Some of these are quite good, like the ones of the duck pond near your house. All the pictures of us are cute. I like the one where we’re on your bed and you’re laughing. I’ve kept the negatives if there are any you may want a copy of. You can be quite photogenic.

  I hope your work is going well. (I’m having the hardest time making myself do debate work.) Take care of yourself—give your parents my love. Bless you.

  Love always,

  Amy

  I felt a glow when I finished reading. I carefully placed the letter in a green shoe box by my bed where I kept all my valued correspondence. The letter was sweet—a reminder of why I had loved Amy. Pausing a second, I revised that thought. It was a reminder, I realized, of why I still loved her.

  On Pete’s urging, I brought my dad to the Musalla as Ramadan began. I was hesitant to bring him. When al-Husein had visited Ashland, we had shared our beautiful, tolerant, and fundamentally liberal vision of Islam with my parents. I knew how much it meant to them that our view of God was so similar to theirs, and that we viewed them as fellow travelers in faith. I knew that what my dad would see at the Musalla was far different than that. I feared that it would hurt him to see that I was working for Muslims whose views were so at odds not only with al-Husein’s, but also his own.

  When we drove back from the Musalla, my father seemed hesitant to discuss his experience. It seemed that the encounter had indeed hurt him in some small way. At first, all he said was that the people he had met were “interesting.” In my experience, my dad’s use of the word “interesting” is usually a code for his having experienced a problem with someone or something.

  Operation Desert Fox had occurred just before Ramadan. The three-day bombing campaign in Iraq had been ordered by President Clinton in December 1998 in response to Saddam Hussein’s refusal to comply with UN Security Council resolutions calling for disarmament. When I asked my father what he meant by the word interesting, he told me about a conversation he’d stumbled into about Operation Desert Fox. “They were saying this was all Bill Clinton’s fault, and that Saddam Hussein wasn’t part of the problem,” my dad said, astonished.

  I assured him that I didn’t agree, but there wasn’t much else I could add. Best I could tell, this was a fairly representative view. I remembered how I brought Amy to the Musalla shortly before she left town. Just as Pete told me to bring my dad out, he had also insisted that I bring Amy one night. She was not impressed. For one thing, her feminist instincts rebelled against being forced to go downstairs with the w
omen while I was upstairs with the men. But she had also heard the women discussing Operation Desert Fox, and said that their anger was focused solely on the United States. One of the women did voice some mild criticism of Saddam Hussein: she was upset that Saddam had cursed on television in response to the strikes. “I’m pretty sure he’s done worse things than that!” Amy told me, with an incredulous laugh.

  It would be a while before I dared bring my dad back to the Musalla.

  A few nights after my dad’s visit, I found Dawood continuing the conversation about Operation Desert Fox, saying that the strikes showed the United States to be an enemy of Islam. Someone tepidly replied that the United States made sure the bombing ended before Ramadan.

  “Why?” Dawood said. “Because they respect Islam? Who are these shaytans [Satans] trying to fool?”

  So Clinton’s nod toward Islam only drew laughter and jeers.

  Later the conversation turned to the translation of the Qur’an that Al Haramain distributed. Called the Noble Qur’an, it was translated by a couple of Saudi scholars, Muhammad Muhsin Khan and Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din Al-Hilali. They had decided to undertake a new translation because they felt that existing versions didn’t properly reflect the earliest interpretation of the faith.

  The consensus in the room was that the Noble Qur’an translation was a masterpiece. It favored accuracy over flowery language, and thus included a large number of parenthetical statements meant to capture the precise meaning of the text. It also featured footnotes designed to explain the verses. Some other Qur’anic translations also had a large number of footnotes, but the Noble Qur’an’s didn’t feature the translators’ own exegesis. Rather, they generally consisted of quotes from the ahadith, thus using the Prophet’s example to explain God’s word.

  Dawood said, “There are some very good essays in that translation. There’s a good essay on jihad in the back.”