My Year Inside Radical Islam Read Online Free PDF

was affiliated with the Islamic ministry of W. D. Muhammad, the son of former Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. When al-Husein asked me to go with him, I was hesitant. There were a couple of mosques in town, and al-Husein had mentioned that he had heard anti-Semitic comments at one. I was also skeptical of Masjid al-Mu’minun’s roots in the Nation of Islam, which taught that the white man is the devil.
    But I nonetheless joined al-Husein. When we got to the mosque, it didn’t stand out from the other nondescript houses dotting Harriet Tub-man Drive. Once we were inside, though, the building had an Islamic feel, with a large well-lit prayer room and a poster of the Grand Mosque in Mecca on one of the walls.
    There were some two dozen mosque-goers inside, mostly African-Americans, with a few Middle Easterners mixed in. I noticed that the men sat near the front of the prayer room, facing forward, while the women gathered in the back of the room. Shortly after we arrived, a tall black man stood up and shouted in melodic Arabic: “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Ashadu laa ilaha il Allah! Ashadu laa ilaha il Allah!” I realized that this was the start of the call to prayer, signaling that the services were beginning.
    A short Middle Eastern man with a humble demeanor delivered the sermon, which is known as a khutbah in Arabic. Al-Husein whispered that this was a guest imam who normally didn’t give the khutbah. He obviously wasn’t used to public speaking and seemed bashful. But I listened attentively.
    The sermon was devoted to apologetics for Islam, explaining why it could shed light where other religions proved deficient. He started out by rebutting the Christian notion of the Trinity, pointing out that the Qur’an says of God, “He begetteth not, nor is he begotten.”
    “So,” the speaker said, “Allah has no son. Allah is only one, which leaves no room for a son or a trinity of gods.” I was puzzled that his only evidence came from the Qur’an. But I nonetheless sympathized with his argument, as I was unwilling to accept the idea that a man could be God.
    It made me nervous when the sermon’s refutations moved from Christianity to Judaism. I recalled what al-Husein told me about his stint as a fundamentalist, when he thought of every Jew as a racist. I became even more concerned when the discussion of Judaism immediately turned to the concept of the chosen people. Although the speaker rejected the notion that the Jews were God’s chosen people, the speech didn’t become an anti-Semitic screed. Instead the guest imam simply said, “But this isn’t so. The Holy Qur’an rejects any race’s superiority when it states in Sura [chapter] 49:13: ‘O mankind! We created you from a single pair of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other, not that ye may despise each other. Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is he who is the most righteous of you.’ So Allah doesn’t prefer people because of their race, but only because of their righteousness.”
    That was it; no extra digs at the Jews.
    I found that my other hesitation, the mosque’s roots in the racist Nation of Islam, proved equally unjustified. While the attendees were predominantly black, I didn’t feel out of place. Instead, I noticed a spirit of brotherhood in faith that united the believers regardless of race.
    I had found myself absorbed by the question of race since moving to the South, as I was uncomfortable with the racial tension that I witnessed in North Carolina. But my visit to Masjid al-Mu’minun reminded me of the moving passage in Malcolm X’s autobiography when he went on the hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. It is there that Malcolm X experienced a reversal in his thoughts about race:
    Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair—all together, brothers! All honoring