Inside-out

Photo by Tom Berger
 

I’m an American and I work with what I guess you could call a sleeper cell here in New York City. I’m what George W. Bush and CNN would call a terrorist. I don’t see myself as that at all. I feel more righteous than I ever did when I was growing up Catholic in New Jersey. I feel like Superman or the Flash.

My interest in the Muslim world began in high school, when I read the Autobiography of Malcolm X. I was struck by the image of thousands of pilgrims on the Haj bowing down before the Kaaba in humble, masculine purity. I briefly practiced both Buddhism and Falun Gong in college, but was won over by Islam’s focus on the abnegation of the self before the great God of Gods. After graduation, I moved to the city and began attending a small mosque, which is where I first met the Sadiq. He is the leader of the group of people that I belong to. The Sadiq saw that I had been born into the excesses of capitalism—the enslavement of our fellow man, the celebration of the base and the sensual, the drugs and the gambling, the shameful flaunting of women’s flesh. After he gave me a series of private exegetical lessons on the Koran, I began to receive messages from Al-Jabbar.

Al-Jabbar is not the fat guy from Star Wars. He is the tenth name of God. It means God the Impeller, God the Oppressor. I got Al-Jabbar’s hushmail address from the Sadiq, and now Al-Jabbar sends me an encrypted message about once a week with a new assignment. My first assignment was to buy a box of Marlboros and some rolls of ultrasoft toilet paper and leave them in the lobby of a certain apartment building for our brothers who are under constant surveillance and cannot risk venturing out. My second assignment had more substance—I was to double-park my car in front of the Chrysler Building on Lexington Avenue, get out, and time how long it took for the infidel tow truck to show up (28 minutes). This week, I took the A-train from Canal Street and observed a “stranger” disembark at Penn Station. It was not until 116th Street that the police took notice of the bulky gym bag he had left on the floor. I reported all this in detail to the greater-than-great Al-Jabbar.

Of course, this is not a life of constant pleasure. I have forsworn Western diversions such as popular music and television. It’s funny, though—the one thing I miss the most is my PlayStation 2. I think a few of the guys that I work with on this have a natural curiosity about these things too. I mean, these are 25-year-old “niggaz” we’re talking about. Recently, one of my contacts, Sabbalah, asked me via email if I knew of “Britt-anus [sic] Spears and her recordings.” I laughed with glee and then felt great shame.

Yes, I understand my work might lead to the deaths of some American civilians. But I wouldn’t call myself a terrorist any more than the Founding Fathers of America would call themselves negros. I don’t take pleasure in the idea of killing innocent people, but I am willing to use murder as the ultimate expedient. History is written with the bodies of innocents. The thought that we’re doing this to cavort with 99 virgins in the afterlife is one of the greatest hearsays the Western press has perpetrated against us, a lie that’s still part of the popular consciousness today despite the fact that it was written by Jack Kelly, the disgraced USA Today plagiarist. You are too self-absorbed to think that anyone anywhere could be motivated by a cause higher than participation in some existential payday. You lead lives without purpose, and yet are too afraid of death to imagine sacrificing your own life for a cause larger than yourself. However, if there are that many virgins in outer space, I am not going to kick them off my cloud for eating crackers (you know?).

It may seem reckless for me to come forward in this forum, but even on the off-chance that I’m discovered, our work will go on. The Sadiq and I are just two more angry, devout Muslims fighting for our civilization—I doubt we could tell the FBI anything about Al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden that they don’t already know. And I am not so naïve as to think that my old college friends will read this article and change their ways. But I do know Osama monitors the decadent Western press. If he reads this he will know that he is not fighting alone. Long live the glorious struggle and let it continue to reign supreme in the greatness of all that is strong for Allah for one and for all in the goodness of all men’s hearts that are united as one against the infidels forever!

JOHN SKYWALKER LINDENBERG