When Faith Goes Too Far

Seduced by radical Islam, I became everything I once despised.

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Change Text Size

Change Text Size
|
Bookmark

Bookmark

Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
|
Print
|
E-Mail

More On:

Seduced by Radical Islam

Before I was an FBI informant, an apostate and a blasphemer, I was a devout believer in radical Islam. That meant I had to remember a lot of rules. I could never pet a dog or shake hands with a woman. I could eat only with my right hand, and before prayer, I had to roll my pant legs above my ankles. I accepted all this.

And more. I believed that non-Islamic governments were illegitimate, that jihadists were brave holy warriors carrying out the will of Allah, that Jews and other non-Muslims were inferiors who had to be conquered and ruled. Funny thing, I was born Jewish. At 23, with my nose in a wool prayer rug, I found myself praying for the humiliation of my parents because true Islam demanded it, or so I believed.

This is the story of how I was seduced by radical Islam -- and how, over time, I embraced a worldview that I had once abhorred.

I grew up in Ashland, Oregon, the only son of parents who were nontraditional, to say the least. They were sort of Unitarian Jews who esteemed a mishmash of religious figures from different faiths -- a spiritual patchwork that I found unfulfilling.

It was during my junior year at Wake Forest University, in 1997, that I first learned about Islam. One friend in the dorm was a moderate Muslim whose faith led him to become a campus activist, fighting religious prejudice and homophobia. His convictions appealed to me, and I was envious of the spiritual anchor in his life.

I went to a mosque for the first time with him and took part in the Islamic ritual of prayer. I didn't even try to repeat the Arabic words; I just did my best to imitate the bowing and prostration. As I left, one of the Muslims came up and gave me a book: What Every American Should Know About Islam and the Muslims.

I read this volume and others, hoping to be reassured that our Western fears of Islamic terrorism were misplaced. There were certainly Muslim extremists, but Christianity had also gone through dark periods, hadn't it?

Then, during my next semester abroad in Venice, I befriended an Italian convert to Islam. I knew there was an emptiness in my life, and eventually I asked, "How do I become a Muslim?"

That evening, I publicly declared my devotion to Islam by reciting the shahadah, the Islamic declaration of faith, before Muslim witnesses. I had found my spiritual home.