My Year Inside Radical Islam Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  one - SEARCHING FOR GOD AMONG THE HIPPIES

  two - CAMPUS RADICAL

  three - A FROWN AND AN AK - 47

  four - DOGS BARKING

  five - “WHAT’S SHAKING, SHAKEY?”

  six - HAWK

  seven - SALAFI

  eight - MAN BITES DOG

  nine - THE JEWS’ PLAN TO RUIN EVERYTHING

  ten - NEW YORK, NEW YORK

  eleven - RESURRECTION

  twelve - A QUIET NORMAL LIFE

  thirteen - INFORMANT

  fourteen - REUNION

  epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  GLOSSARY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  About the Author

  PRAISE FOR MY YEAR INSIDE RADICAL ISLAM

  “More than five years after these perceptions became deathly important, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross maintains we are still woefully behind in ‘understanding how the enemy thinks, understanding jihadist ideology, understanding how people become radicalized.’ As a recent convert from part of the problem to part of the solution, Gartenstein-Ross provides a highly personal case study in My Year Inside Radical Islam.” —The Oregonian

  “My Year Inside Radical Islam is the story of a faith journey rather than an exposé of Islam. Gartenstein-Ross writes in a compelling but evenhanded manner and lets the facts speak for themselves. . . . His experience suggests that those who are raised without clear religious convictions may find the allure of extremism difficult to resist.”

  —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  “A rising star in the counterterrorism community . . .While a growing number of former terrorist operatives and counterterrorism officials are publishing insider accounts of their shadowy battles, Gartenstein-Ross offers a troubling testimony on the lure of radical Islam for Westerners. This is not merely an academic proposition, since Western converts like him pose a major challenge to law-enforcement officials in their fight against radical Islamist networks.” —International Herald Tribune

  “Gartenstein-Ross never approached the premeditated violent radicalism of Gadahn or Walker Lindh. He can offer only so much insight into the paths of the disturbed men who would fight against their own country or, like the London bombers, end their lives while blowing up the humanity around them. But Gartenstein-Ross’s book, though less sensational than some might like, offers a window into a more commonplace but no less important experience: that of conversion to Islam today. He reveals how ideologically vulnerable a convert can be; in that first flush of excitement and devotion, almost anyone claiming Islamic authority can dramatically imprint the convert’s faith.” —Islamica Magazine

  “Gartenstein-Ross reveals how widening doctrinal tensions are dividing twenty-first-century expressions of Islam in this memoir of his journey into and out of the faith. . . . For readers trying to understand Muslims on both sides of the radical-moderate divide, Gartenstein-Ross’s story will be an eye-opener.” —Booklist

  “The author, not unlike ‘Jihad Johnny’ Walker Lindh, began a journey of faith that led him to Islam. Fortunately for the rest of us, Gartenstein-Ross’s search took him down a radically different path from that of Walker.”

  —The Reverend Canon Keith Roderick, Secretary-General, Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights

  “An extraordinary memoir of an extraordinary journey—from child of Jewish hippies to apathetic undergrad to Sufi Muslim activist to Islamic extremist to FBI informer and counterterrorism expert. Brave, beautifully written, witty, introspective, and gripping, this book makes a unique and invaluable contribution to our understanding of Islamic extremists, from one who lived and worked among them. I couldn’t put it down—and neither will you.”

  —Michelle Malkin, author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores

  “Unlike so many authors who have written on radical Islam, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross provides a well-crafted analysis from within the movement itself, drawing on his personal experiences to show how young men are radicalized and then encouraged to support or even participate personally in violence. . . . An invaluable examination of jihadism in America, and the threats that it poses to our country.”

  —Mary R. Habeck, associate professor, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University

  “Daveed Gartenstein-Ross’s courageous journey across the boundary between religion and ideology helps us understand how Muslim youth throughout the world can transition from peaceful followers of Islam to suicide bombers. A must-read.”

  —Lieutenant General Thomas G. McInerney, USAF (Ret.), coauthor of Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror

  “[A] riveting memoir . . . Daveed Gartenstein-Ross’s is a prophetic voice that we can’t afford to ignore.” —Rod Dreher, The Dallas Morning News and blogger at Beliefnet.com

  “Daveed Gartenstein-Ross shares his unique perspective as well as a deep religious conviction in this compelling book.”

  —Dennis M. Lormel, former Chief, Terrorist Financing Operations Section, Counterterrorism Division, FBI

  JEREMY P. TARCHER/PENGUIN

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014,

  USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland,

  25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd,

  11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ),

  67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson

  New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First trade paperback edition 2008

  Copyright © 2007 by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

  eISBN : 978-1-4406-3371-3

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is dedicated to Amy Elizabeth Powell, because it is love that saw me through.

  This book is also dedicated to al-Husein Madhany and Mike Hollister, two men who took it upon themselves to teach me about God.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  As with any memoir, a large part of this book is dependent on my memory. Given the sensitivity of the subject matter I’m writing about, I’ve attempted wherever possible to track down eyewitnesses and documents relevant to the events described herein. Generally, any quotes from personal conversations are approximations of what was actually said. I had much better success finding relevant e-mail and Internet postings. Virtually all of the e-mail and Internet postings that I quote from are direct quotes.

  In most cases, I have used the actual names of the people discussed in the narrative. In a few instances, h
owever, the names have been changed for privacy reasons.

  one

  SEARCHING FOR GOD AMONG THE HIPPIES

  Before I was an FBI informant, an apostate, and a blasphemer, I was a devout believer in radical Islam who worked for a Saudi-funded charity that sent money to al-Qaeda. At the time, it all seemed pretty normal.

  On the inside of a radical Islamic group, there are many rules to remember. A lot of them involve limbs. I could eat using only my right hand. I could never pet a dog or shake hands with a woman. To avoid Allah’s wrath, I had to roll up my pants legs above the ankles. On the other hand, shorts on men had to extend below the knee or they were indecent. I believed in all of this and more. I believed that Jews and other nonbelievers had to be conquered and ruled as the inferiors they are.

  Funny thing, I was born Jewish. At twenty-three, with my nose in a wool prayer rug, I had to pray for the humiliation of my parents.

  This is a story about the seduction of radical Islam, which, like love, can take its devotees suddenly or by degrees, and the long, dangerous climb out. It is a story of converts trapped by extremist views that once seemed alien, furtive calls to the FBI, and a surprising series of revelations that changed my life.

  My name is Daveed Gartenstein-Ross. If you went looking for my childhood home, you’d snake along I-5 out of California, follow the green-and-white signs to the Elizabethan-themed tourist town of Ashland, Oregon, and wend your way into one of the town’s countless subdivisions. There, you would find my house at the end of a lazy cul-de-sac. It wouldn’t be hard to spot. My neighbors all had perfect green lawns, while we had the rocks and weeds of an old riverbed. In the back, we kept an untamed jungle of trees and flowers. Our neighbors did not complain; we were on the hippie end of a hippie town.

  Like most people who grow up in Ashland, I would complain constantly that there was nothing to do. But I always knew that I would miss the place. Ashland was a liberal oasis in conservative southern Oregon and it brimmed with counterculture. There was an award-winning Shakespearean theater. There was Lithia Park, designed by Golden Gate Park’s creator. And there was the telling fact that this hamlet of only fifteen thousand boasted close to a dozen bookstores.

  My parents fell in love with Ashland during a brief visit when I was three years old. For those who are drawn to the town, it is the peaks they see first. The Siskiyou Mountains meet the Cascades in Ashland, one stop along the Cascades’ northward crawl to Mount St. Helens. It is these hills that give the best view of town. A short hike would take you to a vantage point above the park where you could see my old childhood haunts: the plaza and ice cream shop, the baseball diamonds, the dirt lot off C Street where my friends and I used to race our bikes.

  My family moved a couple of times before settling down at the end of our cul-de-sac. We first lived in a brown ranch house in the Quiet Village neighborhood before spending half a dozen years in a town house on sloping Wimer Street. Though we moved a few times, every place we lived had the same serene New Age feel inside.

  My parents’ artwork spoke a great deal about their brand of religion. Various scenes from Jesus’ life graced the living room. In the backyard stood a small white statue of Buddha. They were sort of Unitarian Jews who esteemed Jesus and Buddha equally.

  Though my parents were from Jewish backgrounds, they weren’t happy with traditional Judaism and decided to join a new religion when I was still a toddler. It was known as the “Infinite Way.” My dad once described the group as a “disorganized religion,” in contrast to organized religion: it had no membership, no dues, no nonprofit corporation, and no enforcement of doctrine. The group was founded by Joel Goldsmith, who was also born Jewish but became a Christian Scientist; he left Christian Science when his ideas diverged from those of Mary Baker Eddy. Joel, whose followers called him by his first name, founded the Infinite Way around 1940, but didn’t name it then. Instead, he simply started teaching spiritual principles late that year.

  The group’s name came seven years later, when Joel published a book called The Infinite Way. Joel’s teachings focused on awakening people to their unlimited potential that could only be harnessed through spiritual consciousness. As Joel explained: “The necessity for giving up the material sense of existence for the attainment of the spiritual consciousness of life and its activities is the secret of the seers, prophets, and saints of all ages.”

  In an effort to make the spiritual foremost in their own lives, my parents spent a lot of time meditating. Often I would burst into the living room—excited to share something I had seen or read or some small accomplishment, the way kids so often want to—only to find my parents sitting on the couch silently, their eyes closed, their focus on another world.

  My parents’ love for spiritual figures and religious traditions didn’t end with Jesus, Buddha, and the Old Testament prophets. They also cherished the wisdom of Rumi, St. Augustine, and Ramana Maharshi. And they drew lessons from Zen, Taoism, and Sufism. Upon hearing of my parents’ syncretistic views, a friend once jokingly referred to them as “Jewnitarians.”

  People often present the stories of their religious conversions as though their lives were completely normal, and then there was some great thunderclap. My experience, and the experience of other converts I have known, suggests that it’s not that straightforward. Instead, a religious conversion comprises a series of seemingly unrelated events that are later revealed to have had a purpose: they are pointing toward devotion to a god that you never knew. And strange as it may seem, my debates with fundamentalist Christians were milestones on the path to radical Islam.

  These debates came when Christian friends tried to push me on my spiritual views. Mike Hollister is the one I remember best. We met at a debate tournament when I was a high school sophomore. Mike was from the state of Washington. Unlike most high school debaters, he was also an athlete. Six feet tall with light brown hair, Mike played varsity soccer. His athleticism set him apart from other debaters by giving him an unusually strong presence.

  Given the geographic distance between us, there’s no easy way to explain why our chance meeting grew into a friendship. We shared a passion for policy debate and a similarly quirky sense of humor—but these alone don’t make a friendship. The best explanation is that Mike found me interesting because I was unlike his other friends, and I felt the same about him. Mike appreciated my intensely analytic approach to the world, my willingness to debate and discuss every imaginable subject, from politics to economics to baseball. And I was interested in how Mike’s worldview differed from that of my other friends. He was traditional and conservative, values alien to my parents’ Ashland.

  Although we remained friends through college, Mike’s descent into fundamentalist Christianity disturbed me. Having been a nominal Christian through high school, he started to become serious about his faith soon after he started classes at Western Washington University, in Bellingham. Christianity became more central to his identity—and I noticed him becoming less fun and less open-minded.

  While Mike stayed close to home, I went three thousand miles away for college, to Wake Forest University, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the fall of 1994. I was drawn mainly by scholarship money. My parents had more books than dollars, and paying for a private college without a scholarship would have been hard.

  With its closely trimmed lawns, tennis courts, and golf course, Wake Forest’s campus looked like a country club. While this may seem welcoming, and surely was to the majority of students who would eventually join country clubs, it made me feel all the more the stranger. I did not make the coast-to-coast drive in my beat-up red 1985 Toyota Tercel that it would have taken to have the car on campus. But if I had, the car would have stuck out among the BMWs, Mercedeses, and new sports sedans that packed the parking lots. From the day I arrived on campus in red Chuck Taylor sneakers and a flannel shirt, I stuck out almost as much as my car would have. For my first couple of years there, I felt isolated, alone.

  I decided to visi
t Mike early in the summer of 1996, driving up to Washington to see him. Since Wake Forest’s school year ended earlier than Western Washington’s, classes were still in session when I arrived. By then Mike had become deeply involved in a group called Campus Christian Fellowship. I hung out with him and his college friends, who were also fundamentalist Christians, for about a week. They were perfectly nice, but struck me as dangerously naive. They seemed to shut themselves off from so much of the richness and ideas that life had to offer.

  I met Mike’s girlfriend over lunch during that visit. Amy Childers stood about five feet nine and had intense blue eyes. Within the first three minutes of meeting her, she asked me: “So why aren’t you Christian?”

  I was taken aback and offended. What business of hers was it? Though my identity as a Jew was far from central to my life, I immediately shot back, “Because I don’t need to be Christian. Remember, I’m one of God’s chosen people.”

  I found the Old Testament notion that the Jews were the “chosen people” rather absurd, but thought that might be an effective parry.

  My response caught her off guard. Amy muttered something about how it was true that I was one of God’s chosen people, but she envied Jews who became Christian because they were doubly loved by God. “I mean, God loves everybody,” she said, “but Jews who convert get to have a special relationship with Him because they’re part of God’s chosen people, and also get to accept Christ as their savior. They get to be doubly special.”

  I managed to steer the discussion in a different direction. We didn’t talk about Jesus again for the rest of lunch.

  I don’t think Mike realized how much Amy’s question offended me. He simply would not drop the subject of Christianity.

  Like many people, I had adopted most of my parents’ spiritual beliefs when growing up. Or, at least, I had adopted as much of these beliefs as I could understand; true to their liberal vision, my parents were careful not to push their views of God onto me. I believed that truth could be found in most religions—that Jesus had an amazing connection to God, but so did Buddha, so did many other religious figures. I rejected the Christian idea that Jesus had been God: no matter how deep a person’s spiritual insight, there’s a fundamental difference between the Creator and his creation.