Free My Year Inside Radical Islam by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Page A

patients, those whose right brain and left brain are disconnected. He said that some of these patients found their left hand behaving in unexpected ways, as though it had its own malicious will. This, to him, confirmed the wisdom of Islam’s preference for the right hand over the left.
    But before Pete could drive home that point, he made an unexpected (but not uncharacteristic) turn to discussion of marriage in Islam. I found one of his remarks so humorous that I later told some friends about it. “The great thing about our religion,” he said, “is that if you get tired of your wife, Allah will let you take on a second wife. You don’t even have to divorce the first one.”
    I was amused rather than horrified to speak with such an outspoken fan of polygamy. I didn’t then realize how seriously he took this.
    A few days later, I brought Pete my résumé.
    I had known from the first time I encountered Ashland’s Muslims and saw al-Husein debate with Sheikh Hassan that there was a name for the kind of Islam practiced by the community’s leaders: Wahhabism. The Wahhabis are a Sunni sect founded by Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, an eighteenth-century theologian who lived in what is now Saudi Arabia. Abdul Wahhab was obsessed with returning Islam to the puritanical norms that he thought were practiced in Prophet Muhammad’s time. He had a severe and strict interpretation of the faith.
    In accord with Abdul Wahhab’s teachings, the Wahhabis have an absolutist vision for Islam that holds that the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad’s example (the Sunnah) are the only permissible guides for the laws of a state and the conduct of an individual. They resent Muslims whose norms differ from theirs. They reject all Shias for starters, and the Sufis are also particularly despised. Many Sufis are mystical Muslims who aren’t about religious absolutes. They tend to be more free-form in interpreting the Qur’an, somewhat like Reform Jews’ free-form interpretation of the Bible. Despite the acrimony between the Wahhabis and the Sufis, I decided to apply for a job at Al Haramain because, even if my views differed somewhat from those of my coworkers, it seemed like a good opportunity to learn about Islam and to help advance the faith. I could also live with my parents while in Ashland, saving on rent and allowing me to spend more time with the people who meant so much to me before beginning my “adult life.”
    When I gave Pete my résumé, I also showed him some of the work I had done as a campus activist. I had produced a document called “Agenda for Change,” which listed our goals (such as making the school adopt a hate-speech code and changing the core curriculum to require students to take multicultural courses before graduation), as well as concrete steps for attaining the goals. I told Pete that I wanted to produce a similar document that the local Muslim community could rally around—except that our goals would be loftier, for instance, the creation of a functioning Islamic village.
    At the end of the summer, I returned to Wake Forest to teach at its summer debate institute for high school students. Amy Powell was working there as an instructor, and also served as a resident adviser in one of the campus dorms. I had a somewhat more posh living space. I had the top floor of the Nia House (which, during the school year, was an African-American women’s residence) to myself. Amy would usually come to the Nia House at night but return to the dorm before morning.
    One night we were up late and fell asleep while cuddling. After a few hours Amy stirred. I saw the green glow from my alarm clock: 2:53 a.m. She needed to get back to the dorm. Amy leaned over and gave me a quick, tender kiss on the lips. She hesitated a second. “I love you,” she said.
    We had been dating about seven months. Although it was the first time either of us said those three words, I didn’t hesitate. “I love you, too, Amy,” I said.
    By the alarm’s