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

ornate mosque down the road and I flopped down on the hard, lumpy bed, writing in my journal. Although she was half a world away, I found myself thinking of Amy. I mentioned this to al-Husein.
    He remained silent for a moment, then said in a soft voice, “Let me ask you something. Is she a comfort to you?”
    “Is she a comfort to me?”
    “Yes. Is she a comfort to you?” Al-Husein paused, realizing that his question wasn’t sinking in. In an atypical effort to be understood, he said, “In a hadith, Prophet Muhammad said that wives should be a comfort to their husbands.”
    I thought for a short time. “Yes,” I finally said. “Yes, I think she is a comfort to me.”
    Because of my religion, my passion for social justice, and my college debate background, the topic of my honors thesis came naturally. I wrote about the rhetorical differences between Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam and more traditional Muslim groups in appealing to the African-American community.
    The mosque I attended in Winston-Salem was part of the Islamic ministry of W. D. Muhammad. W. D. Muhammad, the son of longtime Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, had led his followers from the Nation of Islam’s old black-nationalist teachings toward traditional Islamic practice. As I researched for the thesis, I found my respect for him growing.
    The Nation of Islam was founded by W. D. Fard (after whom W. D. Muhammad was named), a carpet salesman who lived in Detroit. Although W. D. Fard’s teachings were steeped in Islamic themes, much of what he taught was actually anti-Islamic, merely designed to appeal to what he thought blacks wanted to hear. The most well known of these teachings was that the black race was the world’s original race, and that whites were a race of devils created by an evil scientist. But far more deviant from an Islamic viewpoint, Fard taught that he was God. This was contrary to the faith’s strict monotheism.
    Elijah Muhammad was Fard’s star pupil. On leaving Detroit in 1934 for parts unknown, Fard left him in charge of the fledgling religious group. Under Elijah Muhammad’s leadership, and with the help of national spokesman Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam grew into a powerful organization. At its height, it had eighty-seven temples scattered across the country. When Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, W. D. Muhammad inherited the leadership—even though many members thought that Louis Farrakhan would claim the top post.
    W. D. Muhammad proved to be a religious man who was committed to true Islam. When he took the Nation of Islam’s reins, he transformed it. He first initiated smaller reforms designed to bring the group’s practices in line with those of the worldwide Muslim community, such as prayer five times a day and fasting during the lunar month of Ramadan rather than December. Eventually he also abandoned the group’s racist teachings and its elevation of W. D. Fard. These changes angered Farrakhan and prompted him to create a splinter group, also called the Nation of Islam, devoted to the old black-nationalist theology.
    Eventually W. D. Muhammad abandoned his group’s organizational concept entirely. He told his followers to give up any labels that set them apart from the worldwide community of believers, and to think of themselves simply as Muslims. This left Farrakhan as the only one with a group called the Nation of Islam. I was impressed that although W. D. Muhammad could have gained so much power by fostering the Nation of Islam’s old teachings, he voluntarily moved the group in a different direction. In doing so, he seemed motivated solely by his devotion to God.
    I would later work with other Muslims who had a very different view of W. D. Muhammad. Despite his sacrifices, I would learn that he was viewed as a heretic, and even worse, in some circles. But at the time I wrote my honors thesis, I had no idea how hatred could spring from seemingly small doctrinal differences. And at the time, I had no