Excerpt from My Year Inside Radical Islam

In My Year Inside Radical Islam, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross tells a deeply personal story of his own seduction into the Muslim faith, his deepening commitment to a way of life completely alien to his liberal upbringing in Ashland, Oregon, and his eventual disillusionment and conversion out of Islam.

Unlike so much of what we "know" about radical Islam, which comes from people who are observing it from a distance, across a great cultural divide, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross gives us a first-hand account of what radical Muslims believe, how they behave, how they regard Westerners, and the level of unquestioning fanaticism they demand from their followers.

A vividly written, deeply personal memoir that speaks to one of the most pressing issues of our time, My Year Inside Radical Islam is essential reading for anyone who wants a fuller understanding of the threat we are facing.

Read a partial excerpt from chapter one of My Year Inside Radical Islam below.

Before I was an FBI informant, an apostate, and a blasphemer, I was a devout believer in radical Islam who worked for a Saudi-funded charity that sent money to al-Queda. At the time, it all seemed pretty normal.

On the inside of a radical Islamic group, there are many rules to remember. A lot of them involve limbs. I could eat using only my right hand. I could never pet a dog or shake hands with a woman. To avoid Allah's wrath, I had to roll up my pant legs above the ankles. On the other hand, shorts on men had to extend below the knee or they were indecent. I believed in all of this and more. I believed that Jews and other nonbelievers had to be conquered and ruled as the inferiors they are.

Funny thing, I was born Jewish. At twenty-three, with my nose in a wool prayer rug, I had to pray for the humiliation of my parents.

This is a story about the seduction of radical Islam, which, like love, can take its devotees suddenly or by degrees, and the long, dangerous climb out. It is a story of converts trapped by extremist views that once seemed alien, furtive calls to the FBI, and a surprising series of revelations that changed my life.

My name is Daveed Gartenstein-Ross. If you went looking for my childhood home, you'd snake along I-5 out of California, follow the green-and-white signs to the Elizabethan-themed tourist town of Ashland, Oregon, and wend your way into one of the town's countless subdivisions. There, you would find my house at the end of a lazy cul-de-sac. It wouldn't be hard to spot. My neighbors all had perfect green lawns, while we had the rocks and weeds of an old riverbed. In the back, we kept an untamed jungle of trees and flowers. Our neighbors did not complain; we were on the hippie end of a hippie town.

Like most people who grew up in Ashland, I would complain constantly that there was nothing to do. But I always knew that I would miss the place. Ashland was a liberal oasis in conservative southern Oregon and it brimmed with counterculture. There was an award-winning Shakespearean theater. There was Lithia Park, designed by Golden Gate Park's creator. And there was the telling fact that this hamlet of only fifteen thousand boasted close to a dozen bookstores.

My parents fell in love with Ashland during a brief visit when I was three years old. For those who are drawn to the town, it is the peaks they see first. The Siskiyou Mountains meet the Cascades in Ashland, one stop along the Cascade's northward crawl to Mount St. Helens. It is these hills that give the best view of the town. A short hike would take you to a vantage point above the park where you could see my old childhood haunts: the plaza and the ice cream shop, the baseball diamonds, the dirt lot off C Street where my friends and I used to race our bikes.

My family moved a couple of times before settling down at the end of our cul-de-sac. We lived first in a brown ranch house in the Quiet Village neighborhood before spending a half a dozen years in a town house on sloping Wimer Street. Though we moved a few times, every place we lived in had the same serene New Age feel inside.

My parents' artwork spoke a great deal about their brand of religion. Various scenes from Jesus' life graced the living room. In the backyard stood a small white statue of Buddha. They were sort of Unitary Jews who esteemed Jesus and Buddha equally.

Though my parents were from Jewish backgrounds, they weren't happy with traditional Judaism and decided to join a new religion when I was still a toddler. It was known as the "Infinite Way." My dad once described the group as a "disorganized religion," in contrast to organized religion: it had no membership, no dues, no nonprofit corporation, and no enforcement doctrine. The group was founded by Joel Goldsmith, who was also born Jewish but became a Christian Scientist; he left Christian Science when his ideas diverged from those of Mary Baker Eddy. Joel, whose followers called him by his first name, founded the Infinite Way around 1940, but didn't name it then. Instead, he simply started teaching spiritual principles late that year.

The group's name came seven years later, when Joel published a book called The Infinite Way. Joel's teachings focused on awakening people to their unlimited potential that could only be harnessed through spiritual consciousness. As Joel explained: "The necessity for giving up the material sense of existence for the attainment of the spiritual consciousness of life and its activities is the secret of the seers, prophets, and saints of all ages."

In an effort to make the spiritual foremost in their own lives, my parents spent a lot of time meditating. Often I would burst into the living room-excited to share something I had seen or read or some small accomplishment, the way kids so often want to-only to find my parents sitting on the couch silently, their eyes closed, their focus on another world.

My parents' love for spiritual figures and religious traditions didn't end with Jesus, Buddha, and the Old Testament prophets. They also cherished the wisdom of Rumi, St. Augustine, and Ramana Maharashi.

And they drew lessons from Zen, Taoism, and Sufism. Upon hearing of my parents' syncretistic views, a friend once jokingly referred to them as "Jewnitarians."