Islam in America

Published in the Summer 2009 Middle East Quarterly, pp. 85-87.

by Stephen Schwartz

American Crescent: A Muslim Cleric on the Power of His Faith, the Struggle
against Prejudice, and the Future of Islam in America. By Imam Hassan Qazwini.
New York: Random House, 2007. 284 pp. $26.95. My Year Inside Radical Islam: A
Memoir. By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross. New York: Tarcher-Penguin, 2007. 294 pp.
$24.95. Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization. By Akbar Ahmed.
Washington: The Brookings Institution, 2007. 323 pp. $28.95.
These books, published almost simultaneously, provide alarming glimpses into three
levels of Muslim life in America. These are: first, the sphere of ideological Islamist leadership,
in which the Dearborn-based Shii figure Qazwini, born in Iraq to a well-known, originally
Iranian lineage, has assumed a prominent role. Second, Gartenstein-Ross describes the littleknown but disturbing experience of a Jewish-born convert to Islam who became involved in the
Saudi-financed Wahhabi radical network, as exemplified by the Al-Haramain Islamic
Foundation, which has its American headquarters in Ashland, Ore. The third, a think-tank
volume by Ahmed, a professor of Islamic studies at American University, is characteristic of
recent Beltway briefing manuals in providing a brazen defense of radical Islam to U.S.
policymakers.
Although he is not fully credited, Qazwinis book was coauthoredi.e., probably
ghostwrittenby Brad Crawford, a freelance author. Not surprisingly, the narrative is nothing if
not contradictory. Qazwini first came to the attention of the American public in 2003 when
President George W. Bush kissed him on the cheek in front of media photographers. At that
point, Qazwini was widely considered among American Shii Muslims as one among many
enthusiastic supporters of the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq.
In this text, however, discussion of the Iraq war comes after digressive disclaimers of
broader Muslim responsibility for September 11, vague reminiscences of the Bush campaign of
2000, and complaints about the 2001 Patriot Act, which causes Qazwini to go so far as to
compare the Bush administration with the regime of Saddam Hussein. Then, forgetting his
intimate embrace of the president and the role of Iraqi-American Shia in demanding war in Iraq
as a means of liberating the Shii shrine of Karbala, Qazwini declares disingenuously, The war
in Iraq was just as messy in my mind as it was on the ground. My Iraqi relatives had real
freedom of expression for the first time in their livesbut amid the sort of turmoil where talking
is of little use.

Either because of deceit by Qazwini or incompetence by his coauthor, American Crescent

is an exemplar of incoherence. While one hesitates to accuse him of deception, it is obvious that
Qazwini wishes to affirm the martyrdom of Iraqi Shia at the hands of Saddam and his own
loyalty to America while at the same time attempting to grant ideological satisfaction to an array
of critics of the Iraq war. There is a better term for this than deception: It is ingratitude.
Qazwinis revisionism on the Iraq war and American Shii involvement with it
overshadows such typically absurd touches, seen in similar books, as the claim that American
Muslims didnt object to [2000 Democratic vice-presidential candidate] Senator [Joseph]
Liebermans Jewishness, but rather to his unconditional support for the pro-Israeli lobby.
Qazwini describes himself as speaking to Bush only of removing Saddam, not of invasion. But
such a distinction, if meaningful, was too obscure to appear in the public discourse at the time
the Iraq intervention began, and a self-serving attempt to recast events, such as that to which
Qazwini has here committed himself, will not change that reality. Americas most prominent
Shii cleric, in producing this book, has accomplished little in service of the Shii principle of
divine justice.
Gartenstein-Rosss story of his involvement with the Al-Haramain Foundation includes
an evocation of the Jewish commitment to liberal values and social justice, but the emphasis on
the latter is the only element this work has in common with Qazwinis book. A Kenyan-born
Muslim friend at college, Al-Husein Madawy, included in the dedications of the book, had
journeyed from Ismaili Shiism through an unspecified radical form of Sunnism and introduced
the young Jewish Oregonian liberal to the mystical Islamic Sufi tradition.
Gartenstein-Ross was drawn to Sufism and made his affirmation of faith, or shahada,
while traveling in Italy. When he returned to Ashland, he found a local Islamic congregation,
which the author attended for prayers, led by an Iranian, Pete Seda, also known, according to a
federal indictment, as Pirouz Sedaghaty and Abu Yunus.1 This congregation was Wahhabi and
hosted a sermon by a Saudi preacher, Hassan Zabady. Madawy, the Sufi mentor of GartensteinRoss, tried to debate the Wahhabi imam but without effect.
From prayer in a backroom mosque in Ashland, Gartenstein-Ross went on to
employment at Al-Haramain, an ambitious expansion of which was enabled by a significant
influx of Saudi financing. Seda and his associates established the young converts hometown as
the first American headquarters of the powerful charity, which has acted as a cover for Wahhabi
outreach and terrorist recruitment worldwide.2 For a year Gartenstein-Ross served Al-Haramain.
But as his commitment to the charity increased, he was exposed to repellent Wahhabi teachings,
such as those in favor of female genital mutilation and opposed to music. In a Wahhabi
environment, the author succumbed, if only for a brief time, to the allure of purity.
The value of Gartenstein-Rosss book resides mainly in its description of ways in which
Wahhabism has penetrated every aspect of American Muslim life, from prayer in rural
communities to widespread missionary activity in the prison system. In perhaps the most
dissonant of many incidents in this account, Gartenstein-Ross describes how Al-Haramain and
Seda offered to support Serbia in its 1999 attacks on the Albanians of Kosovo, a majority of
whom are Muslim, on the grounds that America, supporting the Kosovars by bombing Serbia,
1 U.S. Branch of Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation and Two Officers Indicted for Conspiring to Defraud U.S. Government,
United States Attorneys Office, District of Oregon, Feb. 17, 2005.
2 U.S.-Saudi Arabia Terrorist Financing Designations, U.S. Department of the Treasury, news release, Mar. 11, 2002; Office
of Foreign Assets Control, U.S. Department of the Treasury, news release, Sept. 9, 2004.

was the real culprit. Because of such details, even more than for its insights into the
vulnerabilities of Americans who become Muslims, the book is indispensable.
Ahmeds volume, Journey into Islam, is likewise replete with details, but most are
unoriginal if not banal and questionable. This book purports to introduce the complexities of the
Islamic world to ignorant Westerners, based on an effort Ahmed conducted with a group of five
American youth, grandly titled the Islam in the Age of Globalization research team. To those
acquainted with the faith of Muhammad and the realities of politics in Muslim societies, there is
little new or noteworthy in this compendium. In a pedestrian manner, using biased
questionnaires, the volume recycles media clichs about the alleged social background of
Islamist extremism with special pleading for Deobandism, the Islamic interpretation that
produced the Afghan Taliban.
Ahmed, unfortunately, was induced to appoint as his officially designated research
assistant one Hadia Mubarak, a notorious female hatemonger who has worked for the Wahhabi
lobbys activist cadre, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and who today has
moved on to the tutelage of Americas outstanding apologist for Saudi Wahhabism, John
Esposito of Georgetown University. Ahmeds book is thus a rather typical Beltway product: a
waste of Brookings resources, with dishonest subtextual elements, hawking the dangerous
message that radical Islam is mainstream and moderate.
A key, summary claim is this: President Bush reacted to the tragedy on September 11 in
anger rather than with compassion or understanding. In the topsy-turvy world of American
Islam, nothing, unfortunately, appears impossible today.
Stephen Schwartz is a principal investigator at the Center for Islamic Pluralism.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.