My Year Inside Radical Islam

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

  Nor was this Al Haramain’s only connection to terrorism. The New York Times reported in 2003 that Al Haramain’s Indonesian office had been a conduit for funds to Jemaah Islamiyah, the terrorist group responsible for the October 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia, that killed 202 people, primarily foreign tourists. In designating the office a sponsor of terrorism, the Treasury Department also noted that it provided financial support to al-Qaeda, and that money donated to the Indonesian office may have been diverted to weapons procurement.

  A number of other Al Haramain branches were similarly designated by Treasury after 9/11. The Afghanistan office was designated for supporting the bin Laden-financed Makhtab al-Khidemat terrorist group prior to 9/11, and for its involvement in a group training to attack foreigners in Afghanistan after the Taliban were toppled. The Albania office was designated because of its ties to al-Qaeda and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which led the Treasury Department to conclude that the office “has been used as cover for terrorist activity in Albania and in Europe.” The Bangladesh office was designated after one of its officials sent an operative to conduct surveillance on U.S. consulates in India for a potential terrorist attack. The branch in Ethiopia was designated because of its support for al-Ittihad al-Islamiya, a terrorist group that has carried out attacks on Ethiopian defense forces. And the Pakistan office was designated for supporting the Taliban and the terrorist groups Lashkar e-Taibah and Makhtab al-Khidemat. The Pakistan office also had several employees suspected of being al-Qaeda members, including one who was thought to have financed al-Qaeda operations and another who reportedly planned to carry out terrorist attacks in the United States.

  With offices in more than fifty countries and a very conservative approach to Islam, Al Haramain has also been at the center of controversy concerning the radicalization of Muslim populations throughout the world. This was an issue in Bosnia, where Saudi charities were disappointed in the kind of Islam that Bosnian Muslims practiced and made it their mission to usher them toward Salafism. It was also an issue in the Netherlands, where Dutch intelligence found “financial, organisational and personnel interconnection” between Al Haramain and the radical El Tawheed mosque in Amsterdam. El Tawheed is the mosque where Muhammad Bouyeri reportedly prayed. (Bouyeri brutally killed Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh after van Gogh directed a film called Submission, which dramatized the mistreatment of women born into Muslim families. He shot van Gogh six times, slit his throat with a kitchen knife, then used the knife to impale a five-page note to his chest.)

  I didn’t know any of this about Al Haramain’s international activities at the time. Much of it I couldn’t have known, since the bulk of this information would come to light after the 9/11 attacks. But in the late summer of 1999, I wasn’t concerned about Al Haramain’s alleged connections to the East Africa embassy bombings. Perhaps I should have been.

  Although there were plenty of rules that I still didn’t follow to my satisfaction, I had at least begun to internalize them. I now felt ready to tackle the most difficult laws.

  It was time to read the essay on jihad in the back of the Qur’an that Dawood had mentioned when I began work at Al Haramain. I sat at my kitchen table late at night and turned to it. Entitled “The Call to Jihad (Holy Fighting in Allah’s Cause) in the Qur’an,” it was written by former Saudi chief justice Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid.

  In the essay, Chief Justice bin Humaid outlined the three historical phases of jihad in Islamic jurisprudence: “[A]t first ‘the fighting’ was forbidden,then it was permitted, and after that it was made obligatory— (1) against them who start ‘the fighting’ against you (Muslims) . . . (2) and against all those who worship others along with Allah.”

  There was support for his view that these were the three stages of jihad. Initially, despite the severe persecution that the Prophet faced from the Quraysh tribe in Mecca, he didn’t permit his followers to fight against the Quraysh. Rather than fighting, Muhammad and his followers fled from Mecca to Medina in the hijra.

  After the flight to Medina, the Muslims gained in political and military strength. It was then that Muhammad received new Qur’anic revelations allowing the Muslims to engage in combat in certain circumstances. The Qur’an says in Sura 22, Verses 39 and 40: “Permission to fight is given to those who are fighting them because they have been wronged, and surely Allah is able to give them victory. Those who have been expelled from their homes unjustly only because they said: Our Lord is Allah.”

  And after that, in subsequently revealed verses, jihad became obligatory upon the Muslims. The second Sura of the Qur’an, Verse 190, no longer uses permissive language but rather the language of obligation: “And fight in the way of Allah those who fight you.” And Sura 9, Verse 29, contains an even broader instruction:Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allah, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger . . . (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth among the people of the Scripture, until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

  It was significant that Chief Justice bin Humaid analyzed the order in which these verses were revealed. Although the Qur’an isn’t organized in the order of revelation, this order is important because of the concept of abrogation. Muslim commentators have traditionally held that when two Qur’anic verses are in conflict, the latter verse nullifies, or abrogates, the verse that came before it.

  So Chief Justice bin Humaid argued that the order to refrain from fighting was abrogated by subsequent revelations making it permissible, and that these latter verses were in turn abrogated by verses making jihad obligatory. There was indeed a marked difference in the language as the revelations progressed. The permissive language used to describe the fighting in Sura 22 was replaced by descriptions that used the imperative tense. Thus, Chief Justice bin Humaid argued that believers don’t simply have the option to fight against unbelievers. Rather, Muslims have the affirmative duty to engage in jihad against unbelievers when the unbelievers fight against them (ayah 2:106), and when unbelievers refuse to believe in Allah and the Last Day, accept Islamic sharia, and pay the jizya (ayah 9:29). Chief Justice bin Humaid implored, “Jihad is a great deed indeed and there is no deed whose reward or blessing is as that of it, and for this reason, it is the best thing that one can volunteer for.”

  I thought that I wasn’t ready to read this essay before. And indeed, I wasn’t ready when Dawood first mentioned it. At that time, I was trying to focus on points of agreement with my coworkers, believing that over time I could lead them toward a more moderate view of Islam. But the opposite had occurred. Over time, I became persuaded by the case for a more conservative Islam.

  And now, reading Chief Justice bin Humaid’s essay on jihad, I found myself persuaded by his argument.

  A few minutes later I set up my prayer rug, facing toward Mecca. I made salat for the fifth time that day, the nighttime prayers. All Sunni Muslims make salat in the same way—speaking the same words and going through the same pattern of standing, bowing, kneeling, and prostrating. But after the standard form of salat, Muslims will often pray silently to Allah about their specific needs or desires. This is called du’a (Arabic for supplications). And after salat, for the very first time, I prayed for victory for the mujahideen.

  This is what I had so long resisted, what I had so long believed I was fighting against. But over time my ideas about the faith were transformed, and I now believed this was the right thing to pray for. If it felt uncomfortable for now, that was a problem with my faith. And I had nothing but time to make my faith blossom.

  The four of us sat on the couch, cowering. A very filthy animal was threatening to rub up against us—and potentially, to dirty us. The animal was a tan and dark black dog named Abby, a cross between a grey-hound and a heeler (a herding dog that herds other animals by nipping at their heels).

  We were working on the Islamic documentary that Abdul-Qaadir and his companions had come to the
United States to make. After surveying the various production companies in the area, we selected one in nearby Medford called Landmind Productions, whose stock footage of explosions and flames would later be used by the NFL as a Monday Night Football graphic and in the movie Charlie’s Angels. One of the reasons we selected Landmind was that a man ran it. Most of the other local companies had women in top management positions, which was awkward for us.

  It was a hot, bright day when we drove out to Landmind. It was located in what had once been a pear-packing plant in an old industrial part of Medford. The building was gray near the front entrance, with a large black horizontal stripe running down it. It had the kind of large block windows that I’ve always associated with Elks clubs and Masonic temples.

  After a short wait we were escorted into the building to meet John Foote, the president and founder of Landmind. I noticed that we passed a basketball hoop on the way in, as well as some very comfortable-looking couches along the wall.

  I liked John. He was wiry, standing about five feet ten with brown hair; his clothing reminded me of a skateboarder. We might have been friends in another context. John was twenty-nine years old, running his own business, and had a bubbling enthusiasm for what he did. Within the first hour of meeting him, he took us on a complete tour of the two warehouses that comprised Landmind’s work space.

  John was particularly proud of a jail cell set that he had created for the music video “Criminal” by local punk band Virus Nine. There was a life-size plastic model of a man in an orange jumpsuit and a black skullcap sitting on a wire bed in the cell, looking despondent, a grimy toilet standing against the opposite wall. Landmind did the special effects for his electrocution. There was another set that I also appreciated, a horror scene of a graveyard featuring a zombie in an army jacket, a mummy rising from a coffin, a wooden grave saying “RIP” in white, and a television on the ground that played a looping horror film.

  I loved John’s passion for his work, and found him easy to get along with. But when I looked at him, I saw far more than that. I homed in on how his personal appearance and habits fell short of Islamic norms. He wore an earring—haram, as Sheikh Adly would surely point out, because men are not to wear women’s clothing or accessories. He had a tattoo, also haram. Some of the guys in his crew were even worse; there was a kid named Mike with short black hair and an almost shaved head who smoked like a chimney and wore shorts that didn’t cover his knees, leaving part of his thighs exposed. But of all the ways that the appearance and habits of John and his crew fell short of Islamic norms, surely his dog was the biggest offense.

  I had first learned about the problem of dogs in Islam when al-Husein and I visited Turkey together, and he told me about a hadith where the Prophet said that angels will refuse to enter a house with a dog in it. I had made an effort to study the ahadith in greater depth since then. And I learned that dogs were held in even lower regard than I initially believed. In one hadith, Muhammad said, “Were dogs not a species of creature I should command that they all be killed.” The Prophet also said that dog owners would lose the reward of their good deeds. And he specifically prohibited commerce in dogs—regarding the price of a dog as illegal, along with the earnings of a prostitute and the charge of a soothsayer.

  Our encounter with Abby the dog came while we were waiting for John in one of Landmind’s meeting rooms. Pete, Abdul-Qaadir, and Ahmed Ezzat were also in the room, and we all sat on a large light blue couch. When Abby entered, she paced around in front of us, inquisitive, as though expecting that these new visitors would pet her.

  But we didn’t react like your average visitors. Instead, everyone on the couch leaned back as far as they could, trying to prevent the dog from coming into contact with them. I saw that not only was Ahmed’s body recoiling, but he also craned his head back as far as it would go, as though that could somehow protect him. Ahmed said something in Arabic that I didn’t understand.

  When John entered, he instantly read our body language. “Out of curiosity,” he said, “does Islam have some kind of problem with dogs?”

  “We shouldn’t be around them,” Ahmed blurted out. He exhaled the words as though offended by John’s audacity in leaving us alone in the room with a dog.

  John nodded and smiled. He was taken aback, but did his best to smooth everything over. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll make sure that she doesn’t come back in and bug you.” He tenderly led Abby out of the room. She wagged her tail and took one wistful glance back at us, disappointed that she never got the attention that she had come to expect.

  When John was out of earshot, Abdul-Qaadir asked me in a whisper, “Do you know enough Arabic to understand what Ahmed said?”

  At the time, I did not.

  “I said that if that dog touched me, I was going to kill it,” Ahmed said. Everybody laughed.

  Later, as we left the studios, the close encounter with the canine was still fresh in everybody’s mind, particularly Ahmed’s. As we drove back toward Ashland, he told a story about when he was a boy growing up in Egypt. There had been some dogs in the neighborhood. His mother had warned him about the dogs, since they were at best impure. So when one of the neighborhood dogs finally bit him, he was ready. Ahmed bit the dog right back.

  Ahmed’s story provoked delighted howls of laughter. At the time, we thought of his biting a dog as a minor act of heroism.

  nine

  THE JEWS’ PLAN TO RUIN EVERYTHING

  When I saw that my dad had picked up a book about Islam from the public library to learn more about my religion, my first response was to carefully screen the book for deviance. If there was any question about whether I had truly begun to accept the ways of the Salafis, my instincts in this exchange with my father should have put those doubts to rest.

  I had noticed this Salafi tendency to “correct” others on theological matters early on, before I even began to work at Al Haramain. I wasn’t the only one to notice this. The Naqshbandis’ U.S. Web site, Sunnah.org, had an amusing cartoon called “Forbidding the Good.” I first ran across it in March of 1999, when I was pondering how the Islam practiced at Al Haramain differed from the religion I thought I was embracing when I took my shahadah.

  In the cartoon, a young man decides to convert to Islam after reading a book explaining the faith. The next panel comes a few weeks later in a mosque, when the young man—now wearing a green tunic and sporting a full beard—kisses the Qur’an after reading a chapter. The man sitting next to him, a Wahhabi/Salafi, reprimands him: “Why are you kissing the Qur’an? This is bida—innovation.”

  The Wahhabi/Salafi then sees the new convert with prayer beads, and again corrects him: “This is bida, too!” The Wahhabi/Salafi says to himself, “It is my duty as a Muslim following the right creed, aqida, to help this misguided new Muslim.” Eventually he hounds the new Muslim so much that the young man runs out of the mosque, screaming, “Let me get out of here!” (There was, however, a happy ending: after running out of the mosque, the young man encounters Naqshbandi Muslims, who are able to reignite his passion for Islam.)

  I found the cartoon funny when I first read it, so reflective of the Wahhabi tendency to correct others in matters of faith. And now, that was my first impulse when I saw my dad reading a book about Islam. And I did find something to correct him on.

  The book, I saw, was written by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya religious movement. This was a movement about which I had done much studying. I initially encountered it when working on my honors thesis. At first I came away impressed by the Ahmadis, given their early dawah efforts to bring Americans to Islam. But since I started working for Al Haramain, my impression became far less positive.

  The biggest problem I had with Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was his use of the terms nabi (prophet) and rasul (messenger) in referring to himself, which seemed to contradict the finality of Muhammad’s prophethood. There were also several other Ahmadi beliefs that contradicted more theologically sound accounts. I was now reg
ularly praying for the mujahideen’s victory. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, in contrast, had argued that jihad could only be used to protect against extreme religious persecution, and that it couldn’t be used as a reason for invading neighboring territories. This, to me, contradicted the Qur’anic account.

  So I told my dad, “Be careful with that book. There are a lot of people out there who put out information that doesn’t represent the most carefully considered Islamic view, and Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is one of them. He even claimed to be a prophet, which is completely contrary to Islamic teaching since Muhammad said there would be no other prophets after him.”

  Just like when I told my dad about Mike’s argument for Jesus’ divinity, this statement upset him. “I just wanted to learn more about Islam,” he shot back. “I’m not going to go out and start worshipping Ghulam Ahmad!”

  “They don’t worship him,” I said. “His followers merely think he was a prophet. But that in itself is unacceptable Islamically.”

  The words coming from my mouth were cold and humorless. I remembered how, early in my encounters with Wahhabis, I noticed that they were eager to correct me on any Islamic shortcomings. Now, evidently, I was doing the same to my own family.

  It was nearing the end of July, and it remained light outside well into the evening. I left work around five o’clock and parked my Tercel near the Daniel Meyer Pool. Stone walkways crisscrossed the perfectly cut grass of the fields outside the pool. These fields sprawled for hundreds of feet, up until they met the railroad tracks that cut across the town.