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

severe reprimand. He was so disdainful of non-Muslims and the West that I wondered why he had moved here.
    But I was also concerned. I wondered if he was right. I hadn’t before given any thought to whether there was a continuing duty of hijra. What if there was?
    I found myself glancing over at al-Husein through much of the sermon. I shot him quizzical looks, as though to ask Should I take this stuff seriously? Al-Husein answered with a knowing, reassuring, smile: Don’t let it bother you. There’s nothing to this.
    Sheikh Hassan finished speaking and the congregation prayed. When we were done, there was a question-and-answer session with the sheikh.
    The first person to ask a question was a large red-haired man named Charlie Jones. Charlie had a muscular frame and a sizable gut. His eyes were pale blue. Although he was starting to go bald, he had a large beard, the hallmark of a serious Muslim. Charlie’s speaking style reminded me of Eeyore, the perpetually depressed donkey who was friends with Winnie the Pooh. He leaned forward with his head slightly bowed, speaking earnestly and with great sadness.
    Charlie spoke into the microphone so that the women in the other part of the house could hear his question. There was no microphone for the women. If they had questions, they would have to write them down on a sheet of paper for Pete’s son Yusuf, who was then around ten years old, to bring to the main prayer room. Today, they did not ask questions.
    “I think if we go to the Muslim world, we need to go ashore ready to fight.” Charlie nodded his head when he said this and his eyes widened. “Those governments don’t practice true Islam. They go from house to house and take their citizens’ guns away. Muhammad, peace be upon him, never took away the Ummah ’s weapons.” (The Ummah is the worldwide community of Muslims.)
    A Muslim whose main concern about the corrupt Middle Eastern dictatorships was the lack of Second Amendment rights? I suppressed a chuckle, still amused at stumbling upon a congregation of Muslim rednecks.
    Sheikh Hassan spoke softly in his response and looked away from Charlie. He said that while Middle Eastern governments weren’t practicing true Islam, it was still better to live in the Middle East with other Muslims than to live in this kafir (infidel) society.
    Just as Sheikh Hassan’s style of argument was strange to me, so was the way that he answered questions. His answers were short, and came across as rebukes more than explanations. His message was: I am practicing true Islam, and you should be ashamed of your doubts.
    As a new Muslim, his approach intimidated me. When I first converted to Islam, al-Husein had told me, “No other Muslim will accuse you of not being a Muslim.” His point was that this faith is different from Christianity. We were both struck by how often Christians would accuse certain sects, like the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses, of not being true Christians. The thought that other Muslims would accept me as a brother in faith even if we disagreed on some points was comforting.
    But I didn’t get that impression from Sheikh Hassan. He thought that his way was right and all those who disagreed were deviants, or worse.
    Al-Husein didn’t share my sense of intimidation. He took the microphone after Charlie and spoke into it with a slow, gravelly voice. “To me, the Muslims in the Middle East are bigger kufar than those in the U.S.,” he said. “When I look at the Middle East, I see people who aren’t practicing Islam even though they live in the Muslim world. I see people pushing for a version of sharia law that puts women in an inferior position. I see people who want to destroy personal freedoms. That is in itself a distortion of true Islam.”
    Sheikh Hassan turned to Dawood Rodgers, a beefy man who trained horses for a living, and asked him to explain. Dawood picked up the microphone, turned to al-Husein, and said, “Brother, I used to believe the way you