My Year Inside Radical Islam

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

  Previously, al-Husein had been the only one I could talk with about my struggles within Islam. He and I used to discuss the delicate balance between being true to your faith and making sure that you didn’t descend into unthinking extremism. Now I had no one.

  As much as I loved them, my parents’ view of God did not appeal to me. To me, their mishmash of religious beliefs was more indicative of a transcendent search for beauty than a desire to submit to God’s will. Nor did I think I could discuss this with Amy, since she wasn’t Muslim.

  Deprived of an outlet for discussing these issues, I decided to keep my spiritual struggles to myself as I veered down the road to radicalism.

  You shouldn’t marry that kafir woman.”

  Pete took me aside after work one day to discuss my impending marriage to Amy, and this was his advice. The consummate salesman, Pete had a pitch prepared. “There are women from the Muslim world, like Thai women, and all they wanna do when you come home from work is serve you. ‘Oh, did you have a hard day at work? Here, lemme give you a massage. Lemme make you dinner and take care of you.’ Those women really know how to be obedient, how to take care of their husband, not like American women.”

  He then turned his attention from the proffered Islamic alternative to my fiancée. “Western women are different, bro. Let’s say you’re able to lead her to Islam. Maybe it’ll take five years, maybe seven years. . . .”

  “Sooner than that, inshallah [God willing]!” I desperately wanted her to share my faith.

  “Okay,” Pete said. “Sooner than that, inshallah. But look, bro, what if she does become Muslim? Western women are raised differently than women in the Muslim world. They have their feminisms here, they’re taught from the very beginning that they’re supposed to be ‘independent. ’ Even if she comes around to Islam, even if she accepts the rights that a husband should have over his wife, she’s still not gonna serve you or obey you like a Muslim woman would. And do you really think, even if she becomes Muslim, that she’s gonna let you take on another wife?”

  I didn’t want to carry the conversation any further. But it was not a topic that Pete would let go of easily.

  Soon after Abdul-Qaadir arrived in Ashland, I decided to stop listening to music. This was no small sacrifice.

  I had loved music ever since I was a kid, and had an enormous CD collection. Sometimes I’d find myself thinking in music. I would associate particularly strong emotions with certain songs, would associate different parts of town with other songs. I had a favorite nook near the top of Lithia Park where, when I wanted to be alone, I could sit on a large rock by the babbling creek. It reminded me of Fleetwood Mac’s haunting “Seven Wonders.” There was I-5 connecting the north and south ends of town, a route I’d often take to meet up with my best friend in high school, Jacob Bornstein. That section of freeway made me think of the Doors’ “L.A. Woman.” There were countless other spots that I associated with countless other songs.

  Ever since Dawood first lectured me about the impropriety of music, I struggled with whether I should remove it from my life. It seemed unfathomable that I could simply quit something that had meant so much to me, that was so closely tied to my emotional highs and lows.

  I felt, though, that I needed to make a decision. I drove my Tercel past the golf course, out toward the lake. Driving often helped me clear my head and think. As I drove, I listened to a mixed tape that I had made in college. The music seemed to fit the road. There was a dark, winding stretch where the endless guitar riffs of Golden Earring’s “Twilight Zone” punctuated each turn. As I took the final, sloping drive up toward Emigrant Lake, the near out-of-control mix of a guitar and flute in Jethro Tull’s “Sealion” marked the ascent. And I sat in my car, on the dirt road near the edge of the lake, letting the music wash over me. So many songs, each bringing back some long-forgotten memory or emotion.

  But this would have to end, I decided. There were my coworkers, but there was also my relationship with Allah. (I used to call the Creator either God or Allah interchangeably in my thoughts; by now, I only used the name Allah.) Was music haram? I found some of the evidence in Muhammad bin Jamil Zino’s book unpersuasive the first time I read it. But I couldn’t deny the power of some of the other ahadith. If I really believed in Allah, I had to be intellectually honest. Even if some music were halal (lawful), the music I was listening to was not. Stringed instruments were well known to be haram, and I couldn’t think of a song on my mixed tape that didn’t have a guitar in it. And the themes of my music? Allah, I knew, wouldn’t approve of them. There were songs about sex, songs about drugs—most of the music I listened to was religiously objectionable in some way.

  I drove back toward the house, knowing that this would be the last time I enjoyed the music that I used to love so much. As I got close to home, I decided to take another lap around the block. A chance to listen to one more song.

  As Jimi Hendrix’s “Eazy Rider” reached its crescendo, I finally pulled into the driveway. I ejected the cassette from the car’s tape player. I then held the tape in my hand and sat looking at it. Already I was regretting the loss of music. I wanted to pop the tape back in and keep listening. The ghost echoes of music reverberated through my head.

  I brought the tape into my room, thinking about the temptation of music. I needed finality.

  So I took the tape in both hands and squeezed until it snapped in two. In that instant, the broken tape seemed like a symbol. I was turning my back on a life of not being serious about my faith.

  Then I grabbed a Kleenex from the side of my bed and wrapped the broken tape inside it. I didn’t want my parents to see it. I thought about how they had introduced me to music. I remembered that they had given me a tape of the Beatles’ Abbey Road when I was just six years old, old enough for the album to hold my interest but too young to recognize its true brilliance.

  I wasn’t hiding the tape because my parents would be upset that I’d given up on music. It was larger than that. My parents had no problem with my conversion to Islam because our ideas about religion were fundamentally the same thereafter. No longer. I was careening down a new road, and didn’t know where it would lead me—but I knew that my ideas about religion were no longer like my parents’. And I knew that these differences would hurt them deeply.

  Since Amy and I were now engaged, it made sense that she would spend the summer with me in Oregon. We hadn’t been together since her Christmas break, and I couldn’t wait to see her. But I also felt hesitant.

  I had undergone so many changes since I had last seen her, changes that she couldn’t anticipate and probably couldn’t comprehend. And now I didn’t know how we fit into each other’s lives. Would my views on our relationship change?

  I knew that my coworkers wouldn’t approve of the fact that Amy had come to stay with me for the summer. And I didn’t want them to know that she was here. I wanted to keep my life at work separate from my life with the woman I loved.

  If only hypocrisy were that easy.

  Abdul-Qaadir, at least, had a different take on my marriage to Amy than Pete did.

  Since he knew that I would be marrying a Christian woman, he broached the subject early in his time at the Musalla. He said that it was permissible for a Muslim man to take a Christian wife, but he did have some warnings.

  Abdul-Qaadir first warned that the purpose of marriage was to produce Muslim children. It didn’t matter if my wife was Christian; there was only one faith that my kids could be raised in.

  He warned also that my first obligation would not be to my wife, but to my brothers and sisters in Islam. “There is good in this world, and there is evil,” Abdul-Qaadir said. “And as long as your wife isn’t a Muslim, as far as we’re concerned, she is one hundred percent evil.”

  That remark stuck with me when I went home that evening and saw Amy: she is one hundred percent evil. I tried not to act differently toward her; I tried to put Abdul-Qaadir’s remark out of my mind. But it wasn’t something I could shrug
off easily. Nor was it something, I realized, that I could dismiss out of hand as wrong.

  I was beginning to believe in new rules, restrictions, and moral injuctions that I never could have accepted as a campus activist. I thought about sharia, or Islamic law, almost every day. Wasn’t it really the best way to govern a society? Weren’t Allah’s decrees superior to the shifting sands of modern morality?

  With that, I saw many of my old liberal assumptions come crashing down. Why shouldn’t the state ban homosexuality? Why shouldn’t the state prohibit blasphemous speech?

  For the first time, I began to take these questions seriously.

  One night, Pete asked me to come by his house. I hadn’t been paid in a couple of months. Pete had explained that he didn’t want to write me checks too frequently because it’d surely tip off the IRS that I was working for him. But now he wanted me to come by to discuss payment.

  I parked by his house and walked around to the back, to the old prayer room. The sheets that hung from the ceiling were still up; Pete did not want his visitors to catch a glimpse of his wives. Pete went behind the sheets at one point and returned with a couple of plates of rice and a bottle of tahini. We sat on the floor together eating. I wasn’t going to speak first; the situation concerning my payments had been awkward from the very outset, when the first check I received had ostensibly been for selling Pete a computer.

  Pete took a sip of spiced tea, then asked, “How much did we agree that I was going to pay you a month? Two thousand dollars?”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked at me sternly. “I don’t remember agreeing to that number.”

  I was taken aback. When Pete convinced me to apply for a job, he had shown me the advertisement in Al-Jumuah magazine that listed the salary as $2,000 a month. Still, I didn’t want to come off as defensive. I just nodded and said, “We agreed to two thousand.”

  Pete exhaled and looked at the floor. “Bro,” he said, his voice less lively than usual, “I don’t have the money to pay you. I can give you seven thousand dollars for the past few months’ work and for the rest of your time here, but that’s it.”

  My mind suddenly flashed to the concept called fi sabil Allah, things that you do purely for the pleasure of Allah. Intentions are important to the reward you receive for good deeds, and anything fi sabil Allah is done with the best of intentions. What better reward is there than working to advance Islam while foregoing some of the payment that you’ve been promised?

  “I’ll do it for seven thousand dollars, Pete,” I said. “I’m happy to do it fi sabil Allah.”

  Pete nodded. We sat around chatting a bit longer before I walked to the car to head home. I didn’t mind taking less than Pete had initially advertised the position for. What did bother me, as I drove home, was that Pete had first tried to claim that he never agreed to the advertised salary.

  A few days later on the phone with al-Husein, I found myself saying something the significance of which neither of us fully comprehended at the time. “What they don’t understand when they see how we practice Islam,” I said, “is that we don’t do these things because it’s what we want. We don’t suddenly wake up and decide that we hate music or silk. We do what we do because it’s what Allah wills.”

  The Salafis were now a “we.”

  eight

  MAN BITES DOG

  Some people think you should kill them.”

  This was Abdul-Qaadir’s response when Pete’s eleven-year-old son Yusuf—whose mother had left Islam for Christianity—asked if it was possible for someone who had been Christian, then become Muslim and then returned to Christianity, to again become Muslim.

  Yusuf’s mom had been a source of anguish for Yusuf and his brother Yunus. Both of them looked up to Pete with the full devotion of sons who are starved for their father’s attention. I never met her—she and Pete had long been divorced by the time I got to know him—but I once saw a photo of her and Pete when they were young. She was an attractive blond woman, and Pete looked different back then. Now, despite his mischievous streak, he was quite tense. He actually seemed relaxed back then. Back then he didn’t have a beard, but had big, hippie-type hair. I imagined that he had been like the person I was before I began to work for Al Haramain—liberal, devoted to pluralism, probably unduly optimistic.

  Pete once told me that when he met the mother of Yunus and Yusuf, his main concern was bringing her to the faith. Before anything else, he preached to her about Islam, and eventually persuaded her to convert. Only then did they marry. (The clear implication was that I shouldn’t marry Amy unless I could persuade her to become Muslim.) Eventually, though, she divorced Pete and left Islam. I never heard the story behind this decision, but I now imagine that her experience was similar to mine. I imagine that Pete first told her about a simple, beautiful, and progressive Islam. He may even have believed it when he told her about it. But as Pete became a more serious Muslim, I imagine the rules and restrictions became greater. She may have been uncomfortable with the status of women in her new faith. Pete may have asked her to wear the hijab. Whatever the reasons, she returned to Christianity. I remember thinking at the time that she had left Islam because she wasn’t really ready to submit to Allah’s will. I remember thinking that she had made an enormous mistake.

  Both of Pete’s sons identified themselves as Muslim. The older son, Yunus, was more rebellious, and more troubled, than Yusuf. He had an inquisitive and scientific mind. He’d constantly ask about and latch on to the fine points of Islamic law, even though he didn’t seem too devout. But he certainly enjoyed correcting others when their Islamic conduct didn’t comport with the rules. Yusuf, in contrast, was a sweet kid. He was obedient to Pete, well behaved. I remember watching him play with Dawood’s sons, who clearly looked up to him. At the time, I marveled at how mature Yusuf was for his age.

  Yusuf did seem genuinely devoted to Islam, and he was obviously upset that their mom had left the faith. He wanted her to be Muslim like the rest of us. It was at a night lecture given by Abdul-Qaadir that Yusuf asked his question about those who have left Islam and received what must have been a very upsetting answer.

  I hadn’t gone to that lecture, but the next morning, when Abdul-Qaadir sat down in the office for our morning Islamic chat, he began by saying, “Last night’s lecture caused a bit of controversy.”

  “Oh, really?” I asked.

  Abdul-Qaadir told me about Yusuf’s question, when he’d asked whether it was possible for someone who had been Christian, then become Muslim, and then returned to Christianity to again become Muslim.

  In response, Abdul-Qaadir had said flatly, “Some people think you should kill them.”

  Abdul-Qaadir said that some people were offended by his remarks. “It’s a sensitive issue for Yusuf and Yunus,” he said, “since their mother is an apostate.” He was putting this mildly. Imagine telling an eleven-year-old kid that God wants his mom put to death, and you’ll understand the level of sensitivity at play.

  But that wasn’t what I thought of when Abdul-Qaadir told me about the previous night’s class. I wasn’t thinking about feelings or sensitivities. I wanted to know if those people really should be killed.

  And Abdul-Qaadir had a ready explanation. “The reason a lot of people are uncomfortable with this is because they don’t understand the notion of apostasy in Islam. They have these Western ideas about religion as something you try on to see if it feels comfortable, something that you can take off just as easily as you put it on. They hear that you can be killed for leaving Islam, and their reaction is ‘Huh?’ What they’re not considering is that religion and politics aren’t separable in Islam the way they are in the West. When you take the shahadah, you aren’t just pledging your allegiance to Allah; you’re aligning yourself with the Muslim state. Leaving Islam isn’t just converting from one faith to another. It’s more properly understood as treason.”

  Something had changed in me. It used to be that when I listened to Islamic edicts, the first t
hing I’d ask was: Is this moral? Is this rule just? I had stopped doing that. The question of morality now seemed beside the point. After all, where was I getting my standard for morality if it wasn’t from Allah? Now, when I heard a new fatwa or an unfamiliar point of Islamic law, my initial reaction was purely logical. I no longer asked if it was moral. Rather, I asked whether this was a proper interpretation of the Qur’an and the Sunna. After Abdul-Qaadir explained that apostasy should be thought of as treason, I just nodded and said, “That makes sense.”

  I was beginning to more fully understand what made me refer to myself as a Salafi in my phone conversation with al-Husein. I didn’t want to straddle two worlds with my commitment to Allah battling my passion for “social justice.” I didn’t want to be racked by doubts and uncertainty. I didn’t want to be regarded as a heretic by my brothers and sisters in faith.

  No. I wanted to live a life of conviction—like Abdul-Qaadir, like al-Husein. I wanted a clear guide for telling right from wrong. Was there a better guide than Allah’s own word—the Qur’an—and the example of his last prophet?

  Still, while Abdul-Qaadir’s description of apostasy made sense, I wanted to know for myself: was he right about the evidence?

  I read up on the matter, turning first to Muhammad bin Jamil Zino’s Islamic Guidelines for Individual and Social Reform. I had gone from feeling trepidation whenever I saw the book, as though it were a despised enemy, to considering it an authoritative source of answers.

  Flipping through Zino’s book, I found that it spoke directly to the topic of apostasy. There was a hadith, collected by al-Bukhari, in which the Prophet said, “Whoever apostatizes from Islam should be killed.” This seemed to leave little room for doubt. At the time, I felt proud that I didn’t just react emotionally to Abdul-Qaadir’s comment about the killing of apostates, but that I had instead recognized the logic behind the view, did the research, and found that his statement was theologically supported.