ON February 28, 2006, when more than a dozen federal agents in body-armor broke down my door, pointed automatic weapons in my face and arrested me for making fake documents on my computer, it was the first time in my life I would spend the night behind bars. It was not the first time, however, that adrenaline-pumped police officers aimed their guns at me even though I had no weapon, no record and no argument. When I was 20 years old I was an NASD Series-7 registered stockbroker, a full-time college student at night, and the proud owner of a $5,000, bottom-of-the-line, used Porsche. It was my first car and my worst nightmare. When I wasn't getting it pulled into the shop, probably because I needed an overhaul, I was getting pulled over, hauled out at gunpoint, and searched without probable cause. Sometimes it was because I was a kid with a sports car going a little too fast. Most of the time it was for no reason at all. The reason I know this is because when the cops finished interrogating me, sobriety testing me and searching for drugs and guns I never had, the slew of tickets they wrote me would almost always get dismissed in traffic court. That is, if I could get the day off work to go to traffic court. Now here I was in federal criminal court, ordered held without bond because I had an alias. An alias I created out of desperation, when my license got suspended from thousands of dollars in tickets I couldn't pay and my credit was ruined from thousands in student loans that came due when I dropped out of school. Because I had managed to obtain a real driver's license with documents I made using Photoshop®, the judge called me “a danger to society.” This despite the fact that I hadn't stolen anyone's identity, hadn't stolen any money and had only used my made-up name to drive, establish credit and buy real estate. While it was ultimately ruled that there was no victim, no fine and no restitution to pay, the price I paid for my crime was the forfeiture of over a million dollars in assets and 18 months in the minimum-security camp at Otisville, NY. I was not surprised to learn that the Bureau of Prisons had decided, shortly after 9/11, that the way to prevent the “violent radicalization” of inmates was to decide what books they could or could not read. From the Roman Empire to African-American Slavery to Nazi Germany to modern-day North Korea, those who would control the minds of the masses have long considered a book to be a deadly weapon. Of course, in instituting such a policy the Bureau couldn't legally single out any one religion. Hence the Prison Chapel Library Project: a plan to limit the number of books that federal inmates of all religions could have in their libraries to a list of 150 titles, per religion, that the government considered “acceptable.” Any book in a prison chapel library that was not on the “approved” list was to be removed. Because I was denied bond, my first several months of incarceration were in anything but a country club. Pretrial detention meant 23-hour lockdown, with only one hour a day to exercise, shower, watch TV or go to the law library. To read something besides law books, one had to order them from the publisher. With neither a book catalog nor enough money in my commissary account for even a magazine subscription, ordering my own reading material was not an option. Then one day the brother in the lower bunk gave me a copy of Forty Hadith. I read, “Young man, I shall teach you some words (of advice): Be mindful of Allah, and Allah will protect you. Be mindful of Allah, and you will find Him in front of you. If you ask, ask of Allah; if you seek help, seek help of Allah. Know that if the nation were to gather together to benefit you with anything, it would benefit you only with something that Allah had already prescribed for you, and that if they were to gather together to harm you with anything, they would harm you only with something Allah had already prescribed for you. The pens have been lifted and the pages have dried.” Coincidentally, the day I read in that same book, “That the slave-girl will give birth to her mistress and that you will see the barefooted, naked, destitute herdsman competing in constructing lofty buildings,” the inmate TV was tuned to Jerry Springer, where the guests were teenage girls who defied and cursed their weeping but capitulating mothers. Following this was a program about the large number of poor farmers emigrating from South Asia to Dubai to become construction workers on projects like the “World's Largest Hotel” and the “World's Tallest Building.” And once I read, “A man came to the Prophet (peace be upon im) and said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, direct me to an act which, if I do it, (will cause) Allah to love me and people to love me.' He said, ‘Renounce the world and Allah will love you, and renounce what people possess and people will love you,'” I finally began to understand what I needed to do. I don't know how many federal inmates committed despicable acts of terrorism because they were “radicalized” to hate Americans by what they read in prison, but I lost count of the number of times I was terrorized by angry men with guns and badges who hated me even though I was American. And I've never even owned a gun. Does anyone know how many unarmed Americans who look like me have been terrorized, persecuted, even killed, by the forces of hate right here in America? Those forces have been trying all my life to instill in me a fear of man instead of God. And it was not until I had to face my worst fear being in trouble with the law that I realized that there was no one to turn to for help but God. There was no one's punishment I needed to fear more than God's. According to this small, simple book from 1400 years ago, whatever benefit or harm was coming to me was already written in my Book of Life, and I was at once inspired to read every book I could find from not only the Messenger but also the Author of those moving words. I had grown up in a non-religious household, and every practice of faith I had been exposed to over the years involved, in one way or another, the worship of man. Finally, here was knowledge that spoke to my own logic and reason, with clear proofs addressing what I had always asked about, but had never gotten a straight answer to: If God was the Creator of everything in the universe, why couldn't we appeal directly to Him for our needs and wants? By the time I got sentenced and shipped off to the camp at Otisville, I had read the English translation of the meaning of the Qur'an from cover to cover; learned how to offer the daily prayers and fast for Ramadan; and had testified before a room full of witnesses that there is no god (worthy of worship) but Allah, and that Muhammad (peace be upon him) is His servant and messenger. No one recruited me, “radicalized” me or talked me into submission to the One True God. What I read just simply made sense. – MuslimMatters Douglas Kelly is a former retail stockbroker, life insurance general agent and financial/legal document specialist. He is currently a student at Baruch College in New York, pursuing independent study in Islamic Finance. He expects to complete his first book, I Tried To Enter Heaven With a Fake ID, by early 2010, Insha Allah. __
