My Year Inside Radical Islam (22 page)

Pete wanted to press ahead, immediately, with a response. Like so many of Pete’s ideas, it started with a bang but ended with a whimper. I drafted a letter to
Frontline
on his behalf that he decided not to send because it sounded “too angry”; Pete and some directors from the Riyadh office met with attorneys at a Washington, D.C., law firm and paid them a $50,000 retainer for a defamation suit against PBS that, as far as I know, went nowhere; and we met with a PR consultant a couple of weeks later but never implemented her ideas.

I didn’t give much thought at the time to Al Haramain’s logo appearing in connection with the embassy bombings. It certainly didn’t make me question my affiliation with Al Haramain. My view was that Western governments and the Western media misunderstood and feared Islam, and this seemed to be another case of their misunderstanding.

I probably should have been more suspicious. I had seen Al Haramain’s ideology firsthand and knew about its international reach. Al Haramain was originally formed as a private charity in Riyadh in 1992. By the time I came to work for the group, it had offices in more than fifty countries and an annual budget of $40 to $50 million. Years later, after Islamic extremism finally came crashing into the public consciousness, I would learn about some of the activities that Al Haramain’s branch offices were involved in.

Further evidence would come to light, for example, about Al Haramain’s role in the embassy bombings. The U.S. Treasury ultimately designated Al Haramain’s offices in Kenya and Tanzania as sponsors of terrorism for their role in the plot. The Treasury designation listed multiple connections between Al Haramain and the embassy bombings, including the Al Haramain offices’ involvement in planning the attacks, funding by a wealthy Al Haramain official, and a former Tanzanian Al Haramain director’s role in making preparations for the advance party that planned the bombings. The Al Haramain branch in the Comoros Islands was also designated because it “was used as a staging area and exfiltration route for the perpetrators of the 1998 bombings.”

Nor was this Al Haramain’s only connection to terrorism. The
New York Times
reported in 2003 that Al Haramain’s Indonesian office had been a conduit for funds to Jemaah Islamiyah, the terrorist group responsible for the October 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia, that killed 202 people, primarily foreign tourists. In designating the office a sponsor of terrorism, the Treasury Department also noted that it provided financial support to al-Qaeda, and that money donated to the Indonesian office may have been diverted to weapons procurement.

A number of other Al Haramain branches were similarly designated by Treasury after 9/11. The Afghanistan office was designated for supporting the bin Laden-financed Makhtab al-Khidemat terrorist group prior to 9/11, and for its involvement in a group training to attack foreigners in Afghanistan after the Taliban were toppled. The Albania office was designated because of its ties to al-Qaeda and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which led the Treasury Department to conclude that the office “has been used as cover for terrorist activity in Albania and in Europe.” The Bangladesh office was designated after one of its officials sent an operative to conduct surveillance on U.S. consulates in India for a potential terrorist attack. The branch in Ethiopia was designated because of its support for al-Ittihad al-Islamiya, a terrorist group that has carried out attacks on Ethiopian defense forces. And the Pakistan office was designated for supporting the Taliban and the terrorist groups Lashkar e-Taibah and Makhtab al-Khidemat. The Pakistan office also had several employees suspected of being al-Qaeda members, including one who was thought to have financed al-Qaeda operations and another who reportedly planned to carry out terrorist attacks in the United States.

With offices in more than fifty countries and a very conservative approach to Islam, Al Haramain has also been at the center of controversy concerning the radicalization of Muslim populations throughout the world. This was an issue in Bosnia, where Saudi charities were disappointed in the kind of Islam that Bosnian Muslims practiced and made it their mission to usher them toward Salafism. It was also an issue in the Netherlands, where Dutch intelligence found “financial, organisational and personnel interconnection” between Al Haramain and the radical El Tawheed mosque in Amsterdam. El Tawheed is the mosque where Muhammad Bouyeri reportedly prayed. (Bouyeri brutally killed Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh after van Gogh directed a film called
Submission,
which dramatized the mistreatment of women born into Muslim families. He shot van Gogh six times, slit his throat with a kitchen knife, then used the knife to impale a five-page note to his chest.)

I didn’t know any of this about Al Haramain’s international activities at the time. Much of it I couldn’t have known, since the bulk of this information would come to light after the 9/11 attacks. But in the late summer of 1999, I wasn’t concerned about Al Haramain’s alleged connections to the East Africa embassy bombings. Perhaps I should have been.

Although there were plenty of rules that I still didn’t follow to my satisfaction, I had at least begun to internalize them. I now felt ready to tackle the most difficult laws.

It was time to read the essay on jihad in the back of the Qur’an that Dawood had mentioned when I began work at Al Haramain. I sat at my kitchen table late at night and turned to it. Entitled “The Call to
Jihad
(Holy Fighting in Allah’s Cause) in the Qur’an,” it was written by former Saudi chief justice Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid.

In the essay, Chief Justice bin Humaid outlined the three historical phases of jihad in Islamic jurisprudence: “[A]t first ‘the fighting’ was forbidden,then it was permitted, and after that it was made obligatory— (1) against them who start ‘the fighting’ against you (Muslims) . . . (2) and against all those who worship others along with Allah.”

There was support for his view that these were the three stages of jihad. Initially, despite the severe persecution that the Prophet faced from the Quraysh tribe in Mecca, he didn’t permit his followers to fight against the Quraysh. Rather than fighting, Muhammad and his followers fled from Mecca to Medina in the
hijra.

After the flight to Medina, the Muslims gained in political and military strength. It was then that Muhammad received new Qur’anic revelations allowing the Muslims to engage in combat in certain circumstances. The Qur’an says in Sura 22, Verses 39 and 40: “Permission to fight is given to those who are fighting them because they have been wronged, and surely Allah is able to give them victory. Those who have been expelled from their homes unjustly only because they said: Our Lord is Allah.”

And after that, in subsequently revealed verses, jihad became obligatory upon the Muslims. The second Sura of the Qur’an, Verse 190, no longer uses permissive language but rather the language of obligation: “And fight in the way of Allah those who fight you.” And Sura 9, Verse 29, contains an even broader instruction:

It was significant that Chief Justice bin Humaid analyzed the order in which these verses were revealed. Although the Qur’an isn’t organized in the order of revelation, this order is important because of the concept of abrogation. Muslim commentators have traditionally held that when two Qur’anic verses are in conflict, the latter verse nullifies, or abrogates, the verse that came before it.

So Chief Justice bin Humaid argued that the order to refrain from fighting was abrogated by subsequent revelations making it permissible, and that these latter verses were in turn abrogated by verses making jihad obligatory. There was indeed a marked difference in the language as the revelations progressed. The permissive language used to describe the fighting in Sura 22 was replaced by descriptions that used the imperative tense. Thus, Chief Justice bin Humaid argued that believers don’t simply have the
option
to fight against unbelievers. Rather, Muslims have the affirmative duty to engage in jihad against unbelievers when the unbelievers fight against them (
ayah
2:106), and when unbelievers refuse to believe in Allah and the Last Day, accept Islamic
sharia,
and pay the
jizya
(
ayah
9:29). Chief Justice bin Humaid implored, “
Jihad
is a great deed indeed and there is no deed whose reward or blessing is as that of it, and for this reason, it is the best thing that one can volunteer for.”

I thought that I wasn’t ready to read this essay before. And indeed, I wasn’t ready when Dawood first mentioned it. At that time, I was trying to focus on points of agreement with my coworkers, believing that over time I could lead them toward a more moderate view of Islam. But the opposite had occurred. Over time, I became persuaded by the case for a more conservative Islam.

And now, reading Chief Justice bin Humaid’s essay on jihad, I found myself persuaded by his argument.

A few minutes later I set up my prayer rug, facing toward Mecca. I made
salat
for the fifth time that day, the nighttime prayers. All Sunni Muslims make
salat
in the same way—speaking the same words and going through the same pattern of standing, bowing, kneeling, and prostrating. But after the standard form of
salat,
Muslims will often pray silently to Allah about their specific needs or desires. This is called
du’a
(Arabic for supplications). And after
salat,
for the very first time, I prayed for victory for the mujahideen.

This is what I had so long resisted, what I had so long believed I was fighting against. But over time my ideas about the faith were transformed, and I now believed this was the
right
thing to pray for. If it felt uncomfortable for now, that was a problem with my faith. And I had nothing but time to make my faith blossom.

The four of us sat on the couch, cowering. A very filthy animal was threatening to rub up against us—and potentially, to dirty us. The animal was a tan and dark black dog named Abby, a cross between a grey-hound and a heeler (a herding dog that herds other animals by nipping at their heels).

We were working on the Islamic documentary that Abdul-Qaadir and his companions had come to the United States to make. After surveying the various production companies in the area, we selected one in nearby Medford called Landmind Productions, whose stock footage of explosions and flames would later be used by the NFL as a
Monday Night Football
graphic and in the movie
Charlie’s Angels.
One of the reasons we selected Landmind was that a man ran it. Most of the other local companies had women in top management positions, which was awkward for us.

It was a hot, bright day when we drove out to Landmind. It was located in what had once been a pear-packing plant in an old industrial part of Medford. The building was gray near the front entrance, with a large black horizontal stripe running down it. It had the kind of large block windows that I’ve always associated with Elks clubs and Masonic temples.

After a short wait we were escorted into the building to meet John Foote, the president and founder of Landmind. I noticed that we passed a basketball hoop on the way in, as well as some very comfortable-looking couches along the wall.

I liked John. He was wiry, standing about five feet ten with brown hair; his clothing reminded me of a skateboarder. We might have been friends in another context. John was twenty-nine years old, running his own business, and had a bubbling enthusiasm for what he did. Within the first hour of meeting him, he took us on a complete tour of the two warehouses that comprised Landmind’s work space.

John was particularly proud of a jail cell set that he had created for the music video “Criminal” by local punk band Virus Nine. There was a life-size plastic model of a man in an orange jumpsuit and a black skullcap sitting on a wire bed in the cell, looking despondent, a grimy toilet standing against the opposite wall. Landmind did the special effects for his electrocution. There was another set that I also appreciated, a horror scene of a graveyard featuring a zombie in an army jacket, a mummy rising from a coffin, a wooden grave saying “RIP” in white, and a television on the ground that played a looping horror film.

I loved John’s passion for his work, and found him easy to get along with. But when I looked at him, I saw far more than that. I homed in on how his personal appearance and habits fell short of Islamic norms. He wore an earring—
haram,
as Sheikh Adly would surely point out, because men are not to wear women’s clothing or accessories. He had a tattoo, also
haram.
Some of the guys in his crew were even worse; there was a kid named Mike with short black hair and an almost shaved head who smoked like a chimney and wore shorts that didn’t cover his knees, leaving part of his thighs exposed. But of all the ways that the appearance and habits of John and his crew fell short of Islamic norms, surely his dog was the biggest offense.

I had first learned about the problem of dogs in Islam when al-Husein and I visited Turkey together, and he told me about a
hadith
where the Prophet said that angels will refuse to enter a house with a dog in it. I had made an effort to study the
ahadith
in greater depth since then. And I learned that dogs were held in even lower regard than I initially believed. In one
hadith,
Muhammad said, “Were dogs not a species of creature I should command that they all be killed.” The Prophet also said that dog owners would lose the reward of their good deeds. And he specifically prohibited commerce in dogs—regarding the price of a dog as illegal, along with the earnings of a prostitute and the charge of a soothsayer.