He's the Salafi imam who is the intersection point between a number
On a chilly night in the dead of a New England winter, Yasir Qadhi hurried down the stairs of Yale Universitys religious-studies department, searching urgently for a place to make a private call. A Ph.D. candidate in Islamic studies, Qadhi was a fixture on the New Haven campus.
But Qadhi had another life. Beyond the gothic confines of Yale, he was becoming one of the most influential conservative clerics in American Islam, drawing a tide of followers in the fundamentalist movement known as Salafiya. Raised between Texas and Saudi Arabia, he seemed uniquely deft at balancing the edicts of orthodox Islam with the mores of contemporary America. To law-enforcement agents, he was also a figure of interest, given his prominence in a community considered vulnerable to radicalization. Some officials, noting his message of nonviolence, saw him as an ally. Others were wary, recalling a time when Qadhi spouted a much harder, less tolerant line. On this night, however, it was Qadhis closest followers who were questioning him.
| It was a conference call with 150 of his students at the Al Maghrib Institute to discuss the Pantibomber, who had been one of Mr. Qadhi's students. A tape of the call was given to the journalist by one of the listeners, in which he urged his students away from violence. Andrea Elliott writes long, well-researched pieces, specializing in Muslims at home and abroad -- on the various jihadis the religion has thrown up over the past decade, and on Muslims trying to reconcile tradition with becoming good Americans. This piece is all of eleven pages long, so you pour yourself a cup of coffee or tea, make a small plate of Girl Scout cookies (it's the season!), and settle in. |
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