My Year Inside Radical Islam by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Read Free Book Online Page A

the first to arrive. As other worshippers trickled in, I saw that there were a lot of Caucasian converts. This was clearly not the same as the mosque I had attended in one of Winston-Salem’s black neighborhoods. As more Muslims came in, I took note of the lumberjackstyle flannel, the work boots, the discussions of horseback riding and shooting. I thought of them as Muslim rednecks. Aside from bushy Islamic beards and the occasional kufi, these guys looked like hicks. I would later learn that most of them were outdoorsmen whose cultural context and theology made them unique: half redneck, half hippie, and one hundred percent Islamic fundamentalist.
    Shortly before prayers, a hefty man named Abdullah showed up. He looked like a blind version of Willie Nelson, but far stockier. Abdullah used to be a truck driver, and his tattooed arms were testament to a well-lived past. He circled the room, bear-hugging his friends, lifting some of them into the air with his powerful arms.
    You think you’ve seen everything, then Ashland throws you a curveball.
    Aside from meeting my first Muslim rednecks, I also heard my first radical sermon that day. Hassan Zabady, a Saudi sheikh who lived in northern California, delivered the sermon to an audience of about twenty men. Sheikh Hassan was thin and slightly effeminate, with pale skin and a full beard. He spoke into a microphone. The microphone wouldn’t have been necessary in the cramped room but for the congregation’s strict sex segregation. It was connected to a speaker in another room that let the women hear the sermon.
    Sheikh Hassan spoke about the duty of hijra, or emigration. Historically, the hijra was when Prophet Muhammad and his followers migrated to Medina after facing severe persecution at the hands of Mecca’s Quraysh tribe. Although the Islamic calendar begins with Muhammad’s hijra, I had never given thought to the duty of emigration in modern times. I had assumed that because the hijra occurred fourteen hundred years ago, the Qur’anic verses mentioning it no longer applied to the lives of Muslims.
    Sheikh Hassan’s sermon argued otherwise. He said that Muslims now living in non-Muslim lands were required to move to Islamic countries because non-Islamic society is so corrupt that it will shatter our devotion to Islam. His style of argument was far different from what I had grown used to in my college classes. He didn’t refute possible counterarguments. He didn’t even acknowledge that another side existed.
    Sheikh Hassan also didn’t try to prove that the duty of hijra was a good idea from a secular perspective. Instead, he said only that it was a religious obligation. He read the relevant Qur’anic verses, referenced the ahadith (a hadith is one of Muhammad’s sayings or traditions, distinct from the Qur’an; ahadith is the plural form of hadith ), and that was it.
    “The Holy Qur’an says, ‘Verily, those who believed, and emigrated and strove hard and fought with their property and their lives in the Cause of Allah as well as those who gave asylum and help—these are allies to one another. And as to those who believed but did not emigrate, you owe no duty of protection to them until they emigrate.’ So as Muslims we too must emigrate. We are living in a land ruled by the kufar [infidels]. This is not the way of Muhammad,” he said.
    “Prophet Muhammad, alayhi salaatu was salaam [upon him be prayers and peace], described the risks of living among the kufar. Our beloved prophet said, ‘Anybody who meets, gathers together, lives, and stays with a Mushrik —a polytheist or disbeliever in the Oneness of Allah—and agrees to his ways and opinions, and enjoys living with him, then he is like the Mushrik. ’ So when you live among the kufar, and act like the kufar, and like to live with the kufar, then brothers, you may become just like the kufar. If you do not take the duty of hijra seriously, your faith is in danger.”
    Sheikh Hassan used a tone of