My Year Inside Radical Islam
A Memoir
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2.3 • 6 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
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.
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.
Customer Reviews
What a lie
The description is a lie written by a Jew (natural enemie of islam), if Saudi Arabia was a terrorist supporter than how could we be in an alliance with the US, and taken advantage of the world's need for oil. He hasn't done a bit of research and he writes a book