My Year Inside Radical Islam

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

  “Pete,” I said, “I don’t even wear a thobe when I’m here in the Musalla. Why would I go to my interview in one?”

  “At least wear your kufi, bro,” Pete said. “You want that reporter to know you’re a Muslim, and you want newspaper readers to read the story and say, ‘Wow! If this guy’s a Muslim, I can be a Muslim, too! ’ ”

  On the drive home, I decided that I wouldn’t shave before the interview. As with most of our decisions in life, my choice wasn’t based on any single factor. On the one hand, Charlie was right: my only goal was to please Allah, and not anybody else. But another factor, which I tried to downplay to myself, was the inevitable condemnation of my coworkers if I did shave off the scruff.

  When I met Mail Tribune reporter Bill Varble in a coffee shop off C Street for the interview, he looked puzzled—but not as puzzled as his photographer, who had the unenviable task of making me look presentable for the newspaper. I wore khakis, a blue-and-white-checkered button-up shirt, a kufi, and a few days of scruff. In short, this was not what they expected when they heard that a local resident was a national debating champion who had been selected to represent the United States in a series of debates in Europe.

  When the article came out, it featured two photos. My face didn’t even appear in the main photo, which was just a shot of my hands gesturing to punctuate a point I made during the interview. My face did appear in a much smaller picture in the lower left-hand corner of the piece. And in that photo, it was shrouded by shadows.

  One of the other worshippers who occasionally showed up at the Musalla was Mahmoud Shelton, a white convert with a long beard and turban—the garb and look of the Prophet. Mahmoud already stood out to me because he was a smart guy. He had earned an undergraduate degree in medieval studies from Stanford, which wasn’t typical of the other worshippers at the Musalla. (He would later write a book called Alchemy in Middle-Earth, which analyzed the Islamic elements of The Lord of the Rings.) His appearance reminded me of the Naqshbandis with whom I had taken my shahadah.

  I struck up a conversation with Mahmoud in the foyer by the front door. I told him briefly about how I had come to convert to Islam, and mentioned that I took my shahadah in Italy. “I know some Muslims in Italy,” he replied with a sharp, inquisitive smile. “Who did you take your shahadah with?”

  Normally a venture like this (“What Muslims do you know in Italy?”) is a lark. But I named some names, and—sure enough—Mahmoud knew them. His smile broadened. “Those brothers are so full of life!” he exclaimed.

  Dennis Geren was sitting within earshot. Mahmoud turned to him and said, “Apparently Daveed took his shahadah with some of the Muslims I know in Italy!”

  “That’s interesting,” Dennis said. He didn’t say anything negative, but neither did he say anything positive. To my surprise, I was actually embarrassed when Mahmoud mentioned that he knew the Muslims with whom I took my shahadah. I realized that I wasn’t content to simply avoid saying positive things about the Naqshbandis. I didn’t want Ashland’s other Muslims to know the route I took to come to Islam.

  Dennis left the room a few seconds later. When he was out of earshot, I said to Mahmoud, with a half-smile, “I thought you might be a Naqshbandi.”

  Mahmoud took a furtive look around to make sure nobody else was listening. “If I were you,” he said in a low voice, “I wouldn’t say that word too loudly around here.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I had that part figured out.”

  “You obviously catch on quickly,” he said.

  “Well, it’s good to know that you’re friends with some of the brothers I took my shahadah with.”

  “Yeah,” Mahmoud said, “it’s good to see other Muslims here who are a bit more . . . open-minded about some of these issues.”

  “We should get together sometime and talk a bit more.”

  “Yeah, we could grab coffee, talk about Islam . . . make loud dhikr.” Mahmoud finished his sentence with a mischievous smile. Even bringing it up was a minor act of rebellion.

  I nodded noncommittally. Was loud dhikr really an act of bida? I wondered. Already, just a month into my tenure at Al Haramain, I wanted nothing to do with forms of worship that were theologically questionable. Although I liked Mahmoud and wanted to talk with him more, I wanted no part in loud dhikr for which he had such an affection.

  I thought back to when I had chided al-Husein for telling another Wake Forest student that homosexuality wasn’t forbidden in Islam, just something to be avoided so as not to subject yourself to society’s stigmas. At the time, I was surprised to find myself longing for a strong version of Islam that clashed with my liberal principles. Was I starting to find this stronger version of the faith?

  I missed Amy.

  I must have reread the letter that she sent me along with the photographs of her December trip about a dozen times. And I’d often go through my old Wake Forest e-mail account, reading through messages that Amy had sent months ago. She wasn’t a flowery writer, but had her style. It was obvious from reading her e-mail messages how much Amy loved me. I loved her, too, deeply.

  We spoke often. Even our phone etiquette suggested that this breakup wouldn’t last. We’d call each other Beloved on the phone, the nickname we’d long had for each other because of our names’ shared meaning. Sometimes we’d end phone calls with an “I love you.” And while there’s plenty of platonic love in the world, this wasn’t it.

  When I looked at Dennis Geren, I saw the man whom other members of Al Haramain’s inner circle wanted me to develop into. Dennis was older than me and hadn’t graduated from college—but, unlike me, he readily accepted the theological teachings that were passed along to him. Dennis had been Muslim for less than a year, less time than I had been in the faith. But he was regarded as more theologically mature because he gleefully embraced the conservative teachings of which I was skeptical, and resented Muslims who differed from him.

  Daily life in the office only reinforced Dennis’s extremism. Part of the reason was that most everyone else—or at least, the others who were outspoken—shared Dennis’s outlook. Beyond that, he read a constant stream of vituperative incoming e-mail purporting to show the oppression visited upon Muslims throughout the world. Much of this came from Idris Palmer, the man whose anti-Nation of Islam pamphlet I had encountered while working on my college honors thesis, and whom Yunus had mentioned to me when we were looking at Salim Morgan’s anti-Naqshbandi Web pages.

  Idris was the executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Society for Adherence to the Sunnah, an organization that shared Al Haramain’s desire to promote a “pure” Islam. Idris’s e-mail covered a wide range of issues, but virtually every subject that he e-mailed about seemed to make him livid. His topics ranged from the civil war in Algeria, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to the Nation of Islam, to the moderate sheikh Hisham Kabbani accusing other Muslims of radicalism, to the court decision holding that the Boy Scouts had to accept gay scoutmasters, to the mufti of France’s distortions of Islam.

  Idris’s e-mail on this last point were particularly interesting. There was an incident at a junior high school in Flers, France, where a twelve-year-old girl had been told to remove her hijab. When she refused, teachers at her school went on strike. Idris forwarded an article about this to his e-mail distribution list, along with a note that went into further detail. Dennis Geren printed out Idris’s e-mail and read it to me. “’The girls and their families said they were merely observing the Moslem religion but the French government and many teachers argued the scarves, as symbols of Islamic fundamentalism and the repression of women, were preventing their wearers from becoming integrated into French society,’ ” Dennis read from the Reuters news story.

  He then began to read Idris’s words without noting where the article ended and Idris’s writing began: “’Indeed, the picture of Islam in France is quite ugly. France was directly responsible for fighting Islam in North Africa for one hundred and thirty-seven years, and the French have ne
ver gotten over their defeat at the hands of the Muslims, and have hated Muslims ever since. Especially after hundreds of thousands of French missionaries adopted Islam. . . .’ ”

  “The article says that?” I interrupted.

  “It’s written here,” Dennis said, showing me the printout.

  “That’s not the article,” I said. “That’s Idris Palmer’s commentary on the article.”

  Dennis shrugged. To him, Idris Palmer was no less objective than the Reuters news service. If anything, he probably thought Idris was a better source of information.

  I took the printout from Dennis and read it. Idris was vexed that Muslim schoolgirls who wanted to wear hijab to class were opposed not just by their secular schools, but he claimed that they were also opposed by Dalil Boubakeur, the mufti of France. (A mufti is an Islamic scholar who interprets sharia law.) The e-mail was typical of Idris’s writing style and tone:Some time ago I visited Dalil Boubakeur’s Paris central “mosquee”. His office is guarded by a secretary without hijab and by several armed French police 24 hours a day. He is well known in Paris for promoting what is called, “French Islam” (which equates to “no Islam”). His rulings over the years have caused major problems for any Muslim who wants to assert his or her identity in France. His “fatwas” enjoy the backing of the French government (which recognizes him as the official “mufti”), and many are directly aimed at women. For instance, he made a “ruling” in 1995 that hijab is incompatible with French lifestyle and is thus haram. This came at a time when several Muslim sisters had been expelled from school because they chose to wear hijab. He also informed Muslim fathers that if they want their daughters to be respected in France, they should prepare them to marry kufar.

  In fact, I know a brother who went to the Paris central masjid [mosque] when he was in high school, and one day noticed a young lady in the masjid without hijab. The brother went to the front office and notified the director who told him, “if you want a date with her, just go and ask her.” It is not uncommon to see a bar located only one block from the mosque, full of Muslim men drinking booze on Jumuah.

  Besides, it is common knowledge that the Paris mosque is not only the functionary of the French government but it is the extended arm of the Algerian anti-Islamic regime. This is the same Algerian regime which was exposed last year as being directly responsible for the massacres they have blamed on “fundamentalists” since 1992.3

  Some of the imagery that Idris conjured sounded far-fetched. His statement about bars packed with Muslim men getting drunk on juma seemed to be breathless hyperbole. So did the scene with the man who was trying to complain about a hijab-less woman in the mosque, only to be told that he could ask her on a date. An image flashed through my mind of a meddling high school kid scampering to the mosque leadership to report a Muslim sister for improper attire.

  To Idris, every news story he distributed showed the conspiracy to physically subjugate Islam and to undercut the moral principles on which it stood. Just as Idris was angered by every article that he distributed, so was Dennis. And even though Dennis and I had access to the same e-mail accounts and both got Idris’s messages, he would rant to me about them anyway. Dennis was a man who needed to emote.

  I saw Dennis as a human parrot. He’d read an e-mail that was supposed to make him angry and he’d be angry. An imam would tell him about a fine point of Islamic law and Dennis would instantly agree (provided that the imam’s view was sufficiently conservative). He’d read a fatwa in one of Al Haramain’s books and would instantly accept it.

  Despite this, I was well aware of our relative positions in the local Muslim community. Dennis was viewed as more theologically mature because he accepted those aspects of Wahhabi theology of which I was still skeptical.

  I was in the uncomfortable position at work of disagreeing with the prevailing political and theological sentiments, but lacking the confidence to challenge them. But if this was true for me, the feeling was no doubt greater for many of the non-Muslims who visited the Musalla.

  A local reporter, Traci Buck of the Ashland Daily Tidings, visited near the end of Ramadan to write a “local Muslims celebrate Ramadan” article. She was a very pretty young woman. After she left, Charlie Jones commented on her tight sweater. It was the style of comment that I would become used to during my time at Al Haramain. The point was not simply to objectify her, but to make clear that you couldn’t help objectifying her since she had chosen to dress inappropriately.

  But while she was in the Musalla, Traci got more than she bargained for. I was ready for a typical, and no doubt boring, interview: some information about Islam, some background on Ramadan, some complaints about how our faith was misunderstood. But Dennis Geren didn’t have the standard script in mind.

  When Traci arrived, she wanted to shake our hands. Not wanting her to feel uncomfortable, I did shake hands with her. But Dennis refused. “You probably shouldn’t shake my hand,” he said, “unless you want to marry me.”

  As the interview began, Dennis sat in a chair in a corner of the office. Looking at Traci with an unblinking gaze, he reeled off a series of political statements dressed up as questions. “Muslims are getting battered throughout the world,” he said. “Look at Algeria. They blame all the violence on Muslim ‘fundamentalists.’ But there are videotapes showing the men who’ve been going around slaughtering villagers. These guys are wearing headbands that say, There is no God. Is this the kind of thing a Muslim ‘fundamentalist’ would wear? Or have the government troops been doing this and trying to blame it all on the Muslims?”

  Traci was speechless. She had probably never heard of the Algerian civil war, and had no idea what Dennis was talking about—but his anger was unmistakable. “In France, they’re making schoolgirls take off their hijabs. There are twelve-year-old girls who just want to wear their head scarves to class, and teachers are going on strike to make them leave their hijabs at home! Is this the freedom of religion that I hear so much about in the West? Is this an example of the human rights that people keep talking about?” Dennis laughed contemptuously.

  I couldn’t stop Dennis. The best I could do was wait until Traci looked frantically around the room, trying to find someone who inhabited the same universe as her.

  When she made eye contact with me, I smiled broadly and spoke in a calm, soft voice about the religious aspects of Ramadan. When all was said and done, only my remarks made it into the paper. The reporter was looking for a stock story line—Ramadan is a time of spiritual purification for local Muslims, adherents of a misunderstood religion—and I gave it to her. There was no mention of Dennis’s rant in the article.

  And so, as I often did myself, the reporter chose not to acknowledge that a real clash of values existed here. But for me, this clash of values would become increasingly difficult to ignore.

  At the end of January, it was time for my first paycheck. It was dark outside, nobody else was in the office, and Pete was filling out the check. When he showed it to me, I saw that the memo line said “computer.”

  I didn’t know what to say. My very first job after college, and Pete intended to pay me under the table.

  Going into salesman mode, Pete said, “Bro, if we say we gave you this check because you sold us a computer, you won’t have to pay taxes on it. Can you stick to that?”

  This isn’t what I wanted, but I worried about what would happen if I refused. Would I be fired? I needed the money. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I can stick with that.”

  Pete leaned forward, jabbing his finger in the air for emphasis. “Are you ready to get on the stand and testify and tell the court that we paid you over two thousand dollars for an old computer?”

  I didn’t realize it was this serious. “Yeah,” I said, uncertain.

  Pete smiled and slapped me on the back. “We’ll just say you were real persuasive,” he said, chortling. “A champion debater, you got us to give you a real good price on that old computer.”

  This moment would take on grea
ter significance years down the road.

  six

  HAWK

  Dennis Green was in his midthirties. He had served in the navy as a younger man, and seemed to have led a shiftless life after that. After deciding to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, a 2,650-mile-long trail that runs from the U.S.-Mexico border to the Canadian border, he discovered Ashland. Like my parents, he instantly fell in love with the town. And like my parents, he decided to stay.

  Dennis’s first job in Ashland, selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door, took him to Charlie Jones’s apartment. Once invited inside, Dennis was intrigued by the Qur’anic calligraphy on a poster on the wall, and by the sight of Charlie’s wife in a hijab. They ended up in a long conversation, and Charlie gave Dennis a Qur’an. Soon after reading it, Dennis converted.

  Perhaps because Dennis was a new Muslim, he was generally easier than the others to talk with and debate on the theological issues with which I was wrestling. We spent countless hours in intense religious discussion.

  While Pete had once been known as Falcon, Dennis took after a different bird of prey. Charlie had given Dennis the nickname Hawk because of his hawkish views. The nickname fit.

  Dennis could have a pleasant demeanor. He was modest and self-effacing, and genuinely cared about others. One day, from the office window he glimpsed a car pulling onto the gravelly shoulder just off Highway 99, seemingly with mechanical problems. Thinking the people in the car might need help, Dennis immediately told me to head down there and see what was going on. We weren’t that far from town, and most people would probably have left them alone. I was struck by this gesture. In part, I was struck because it displayed such an altruistic side of Dennis. But I was also struck because Dennis usually had so much anger toward the kufar, launching scathing verbal attacks on non-Muslims and placing the blame for most of the world’s problems on their shoulders— yet here he was concerned about whether these same non-Muslims needed help getting their car to a mechanic.