Fundamentalism - Islam, Muslims - Biography, Fundamentalism, Religious, Islam in the U. S.

My Year Inside Radical Islam: A Memoir

Name: My Year Inside Radical Islam: A Memoir
Author: Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
ISBN: 9781585426119

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

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Overview

My Year Inside Radical Islam is a memoir of first a spiritual and then a political seduction. Raised in liberal Ashland, Oregon, by parents who were Jewish by birth but dismissive of strict dogma, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross converted to Islam in college-a process that began with a desire to connect with both a religious community and a spiritual practice, and eventually led him to sympathize with the most extreme interpretations of the faith with the most radical political implications.

In the year following graduation, Gartenstein-Ross went to work for the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, a charity dedicated to fostering Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia's austere form of Islam-a theological inspiration for many terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda. Shortly after he left Al Haramain-when his own fanaticism had waned-the foundation was charged by the U.S. government for a money-laundering scheme that was seemingly designed to finance terrorist organizations.

Gartenstein-Ross, by this time a lawyer at a prominent firm, volunteered for questioning by the FBI. They already knew who he was.

The story of how a good faith can be distorted and a decent soul can be seduced away from his principles, My Year Inside Radical Islam provides a rare glimpse into the personal interface between religion and politics.

Synopsis

Gartenstein-Ross, by this time a lawyer at a prominent firm, volunteered for questioning by the FBI. They already knew who he was.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

My Year Inside Radical Islam is the story of his faith journey rather than an expose of Islam. Gartenstein-Ross writes in a compelling but even-handed manner and lets the facts speak for themselves. . . . His experience suggests that those who are raised without clear religious convictions may find the allure of extremism difficult to resist.

About the Author, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a counterterrorism consultant. He is frequently asked to give recommendations to law enforcement and senior federal officials, and his articles on terrorism, religious extremism, and the law have appeared in a wide range of publications, including The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Weekly Standard, The Dallas Morning News, Commentary, The New York Sun, and The Washington Times.

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Editorials

The San Francisco Chronicle

[A] fascinating memoir . . . . Gartenstein-Ross is a strong storyteller, who enables the reader to feel the ineluctable draw to fanaticism, as well as the anguish and disillusionment that led him to support violent jihad, but ultimately reject it.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

My Year Inside Radical Islam . . . . is an important resource for understanding Islam in America. There are two deep insights in My Year Inside Radical Islam. The first is an illumination of one of the pathways to radicalism. . . . . The book also illustrates the troubling state of Islamic organizations in the United States.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The International Herald Tribune

A rising star in the counterterrorism community . . . . While a growing number of former terrorist operatives and counterterrorism officials are publishing insider accounts of their shadowy battles, Ross offers a troubling testimony on the lure of radical Islam for Westerners. This is not merely an academic proposition, since Western converts like him pose a major challenge to law-enforcement officials in their fight radical Islamist networks.

Publishers Weekly

Born into a spiritually ambiguous family (his parents are nonpracticing Jews who follow the "Infinite Way"), Gartenstein-Ross grew up in the 1980s, in Ashland, Ore., a bucolic, posthippie paradise with a live-and-let-live ethic. Spiritually adrift through his teens, he discovers Islam through a classmate at Wake Forest University. Gartenstein-Ross-young and searching, like so many Americans of his socioeconomic class-quickly falls under the spell of fiercely committed Muslims. He begins working for al Harman, a radical Islamic charity that would eventually be linked to al-Qaeda, and soon starts a simultaneous process of being drawn deeper into the world of radical Islam and being repulsed by its brutal realities. Gartenstein-Ross fights an inner battle between his idealism, shaped by his socially conscious if somewhat scattered liberal upbringing, and his sense of the growing gap between his personal notion of Islam and the mounting list of rules and limitations its practice entails. This would seem compelling stuff, but throughout the story seems blunted. Even the chapters near the end that deal with Gartenstein-Ross's role as an informer for the FBI after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, lack tension and real insight into the dilemma faced by so many cut adrift in Western secular culture. (Feb.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Gartenstein-Ross, born Jewish and raised in an eclectically spiritual family, converted to Islam as a college student because he was attracted to its emphasis on social justice. Following graduation, he returned to his Oregon hometown in 1999 to work for the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a charity funded by conservative Saudi Wahhabis. His colleagues there challenged his liberal approach to Islam; gradually, he became more intolerant of nonbelievers and came to focus on confrontation with Islam's enemies. His departure for law school in New York after a year provided space to reconsider his views and move away from this rigid approach-and eventually from Islam itself. After the 9/11 attacks, Gartenstein-Ross converted to Christianity and used his experience and legal training to work with law enforcement agencies as a counterterrorism consultant. This straightforward memoir, not nearly as sensational as its title implies, reveals a kind of spiritual seeker who can be attracted to the clarity of a fundamentalist faith and who can sometimes be led from there to violence if isolated from other views. Any cultlike belief can have similar results. A clearly written personal story on a timely subject, this will be of interest to many general readers.-Elizabeth R. Hayford, formerly with the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, Evanston, IL Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Glancing memoir of a young man's religious infatuations and their sometimes baleful consequences. Gartenstein-Ross, now a counterterrorism consultant, was a college student a decade ago, inclined to philosophy, soul-searching and dorm-room arguing about the meaning of life. "And strange as it may seem," he writes, "my debates with fundamentalist Christians were milestones on the path to radical Islam"-a path made less obvious by virtue of his "Jewnitarian" upbringing. Through a roundabout spiritual quest, and encouraged by a Muslim classmate, Gartenstein-Ross came to Allah, convinced that "the true Islam was moderate." His contacts with Muslim radicals at college and at home in Ashland, Ore., suggested otherwise, particularly in the latter spot, where he found himself among an unlikely bunch of outdoorsmen, "half redneck, half hippie, and one hundred percent Islamist." Doctrine is one thing and the real world another. As he goes to work for the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a Wahhabi charity later charged with funding terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda, Gartenstein-Ross is schooled in a piety that sometimes clashes with the quirks and inconsistencies of his fellows. Still, he becomes a Muslim puritan, tossing out his rockFar less revealing of the workings of radical Islam than of a youngster's manifold confusions.