My Year Inside Radical Islam (Tarcher, February 2007) is the newly released memoir of Daveed Gartenstein-Ross.
On March 5, Gartenstein-Ross recounted his atypical story in Philadelphia, addressing members and friends of the Middle East Forum. The overflowing lunch crowd at the Ballard Spahr law offices was treated to the personal odyssey of a Jewish young man from Ashland, Ore., who converted to Islam and is now a practicing Christian.
"I have pulled a trifecta of monotheistic faiths," Gartenstein-Ross said.
Gartenstein-Ross is an expert on counterterrorism who went from being an employee of the Saudi based and al-Qaida-linked Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, to becoming an FBI informant involved in its investigation. He is currently a senior consultant for the Gerard Group International, a counterterrorism and homeland security firm, advising federal and local enforcement, analyzing threats, and conducting training seminars.
Raised by New-Age hippie parents in a non-practicing Jewish family, Gartenstein-Ross grew up with an unusual religious upbringing. Artwork within his home depicted scenes from Jesus' life, while a small white statute of Buddha stood guard in the backyard. By the spring of 1997, upon his arrival at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., he had undergone traumatic experiences, which impacted both his physical health and his spiritual state of mind. It was at this juncture that he befriended al-Husein Madhany, a fellow student at Wake Forest. The tall, Kenyan-born al-Husein was a devout Muslim who prayed five times a day. Their friendship made it easy for Gartenstein-Ross to step into Islam.
Studying Islam, Gartenstein-Ross became convinced that it was a "moderate religion." As he puts it, "The faith felt not only comfortable, but familiar." And by the fall of 1997, he officially converted to Islam.
Returning to his parents' home in Ashland in the summer of 1998, Gartenstein-Ross dutifully attended services at a local mosque, especially the Friday Jumma prayers. Following services one day, Pete Seda, the congregation's leader, gave him a tour of the palatial mosque. He explained that the congregation had been able to build and maintain it because it was affiliated with the Saudi-Wahhabi charity called Al Haramain Islamic Foundation. Seda then encouraged Gartenstein-Ross to apply for a job with Al Haramain. Gartenstein-Ross' first job between college and law school was with this Islamic charity now designated as a terrorist organization.
At the time, Al Haramain was one of the world's largest Wahhabi charities and an inspiration for a number of terrorist groups including al-Qaida. Al Haramain boasted offices in more than 50 countries, with an annual budget somewhere around $80 million according to Gartenstein-Ross. Al Haramain was also a major al-Qaida financier.
Gartenstein-Ross' first noticeable stirring came when he was told by his co-workers at Al Haramain that during Ramadan practicing Muslims do not listen to music. Dawoud, his fellow worker, handed him a copy of Muhammad bin Jamil Zino's Islamic Guidelines for Individual and Social Reform, and lectured to him about the harmful effects of music. For a young man used to playing his CDs in his car, it was a serious trial to go through.
Egyptian-born Sheikh Muhammad Adly came to visit Gartenstein-Ross' Ashland mosque during that Ramadan. Adly taught how to make salat - properly perform Islamic prayers. Adly, upon learning from Gartenstein-Ross of his intention to go to law school, advised him against it.
"You should not go to law school," the sheikh admonished. "If you go to law school, you will have to say that the Constitution is good."
While at Al Haramain, Gartenstein-Ross accepted the idea that Sharia (Islamic law) "was the best way to govern society-in particular, the very strict version of the Wahhabis." He began rationalizing that perhaps "God's decrees," albeit harsh, "were superior to modern morality." Many of Gartenstein-Ross' liberal assumptions came crashing down. He began to ask himself, "Why shouldn't the state enforce the modesty of women or ban homosexuality?" It did not help much that his moderate Muslim college pal al-Husein Madhany became radicalized, and was lost to the extremist interpretation of Islam that summer of 1999.
While attending services at the Ashland mosque, a visiting Islamic scholar, Abdul Qaadir, was telling the morning Islamic chat group about the previous evening's lecture. The question Qaadir was asked dealt with what to do with a Muslim woman that returned to her original faith of Christianity? "Some people think you should kill such women," Qaadir said.
Abdul Qaadir then went on to explain that the reason people were not comfortable with his answer. "It was because they didn't understand the notion of apostasy in Islam," he said. He then added, "They have these Western ideas about religion as something you try on to see if it feels comfortable...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're not 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 treason."
Seeking clearer evidence to Abdul-Qaadir's description of apostasy, Gartenstein-Ross returned to Zino's Islamic Guidelines for deeper answers on apostasy. He found a hadith by al-Bukhari in which the Prophet Muhammad said, "Whoever apostatizes from Islam should be killed."
In 2000, at a point when he had to choose between getting deeper into radical Islam and leaving it, Gartenstein-Ross decided to leave Islam and, he embraced Christianity. As for Al Haramain, its offices played a key role in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. The U.S. Treasury Department designated branches of Al Haramain as terrorist sponsors. In Gartenstein-Ross' own office, two directors were indicted for their role in a money-laundering scheme that funded Chechen Mujahadeen.
In conclusion, Gartenstein Ross summarized, "I don't regret my year inside radical Islam. I learned a lot about myself, and a lot about the seductive pull of an ideology that is today America's deadliest foe."