Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim
by Eboo Patel
Summary
A young Muslim activist explains our critical need to counter the recruitment of youth by religious fundamentalists
Growing up outside Chicago, Eboo Patel had a gut-wrenching feeling of being excluded from mainstream society. In high school he rejected everything about his Indian and Muslim heritage. In college, he discovered the liberatory power of identity politics—and a deep rage at the inequities and hypocrisies of America.
He soon learned that anger is not an identity. [In time,] he saw how religious extremists recruited young people and manipulated them into becoming hate-filled murderers. Patel’s most important discovery was about his responsibility to make the possibility of pluralism a reality in the contemporary world.
Excerpt
Eric Rudolph is in court pleading guilty. But he is not sorry. Not for the radio-controlled nail bomb that he detonated at New Woman All Women Health Care in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed an off-duty police officer and left a nurse hobbled and half-blind. Not for the bomb at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta that killed one, injured dozens, and sent shock waves of fear through the global community. Not for his hate-spitting letter stating, “We declare and will wage
total war on the ungodly communist regime in New York and your legislative bureaucratic lackeys in Washington,” signed “the Army of God.” Not for defiling the Holy Bible by writing “bomb” in the margin of his copy.
In fact, Rudolph is proud and defiant. He lectures the judge on the
righteousness of his actions. He gloats as he recalls federal agents passing
within steps of his hiding place. He unabashedly states that abortion,
homosexuality, and all hints of “global socialism” still need to be
“ruthlessly opposed.” He does this in the name of Christianity, quoting
from the New Testament: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished
my course, I have kept the faith.”
Judge C. Lynwood Smith sentenced Rudolph to two life terms,
compared him to the Nazis, and said that he was shocked at Rudolph’s
lack of remorse. But many others felt a twitch of pride.
Eric Rudolph might have been a loner, but he did not act alone.
He was produced by a movement and encouraged by a culture. In
the woods of western North Carolina, where Rudolph evaded federal
agents for five years, people cheered him on, helped him hide, made
T-shirts that said run rudolph run. The day he was finally caught, a
woman from the area was quoted as saying, “Rudolph’s a Christian and
I’m a Christian . . . Those are our values. These are our woods.”
Of all the information published about Rudolph, one sentence in
particular stood out to me: Rudolph wrote an essay denying the Holocaust
when he was in high school. How does a teenager come to hold
such a view?
The answer is simple: people taught him. Eric Rudolph had always
had trouble in school—fights, truancy. He never quite fit in. His father
died when he was young. His mother met and followed a series
of dangerous iconoclasts who preached a theology of hate….
Eric took to calling the television “the Electric Jew.” He carved
swastikas into his mother’s living room furniture. His library included
virulently anti-Semitic publications such as TheProtocols of the Learned
Elders of Zion, Anne Frank’s Diary: A Hoax, and The International Jew.
Under the tutelage of radical preachers, Eric Rudolph’s hate did what
hate always does: it spread.
I imagine these preachers felt a surge of pride when Rudolph responded
to Judge Smith’s question about whether he set off the bomb
in Birmingham with a smug, “I certainly did.”
Copyright © 2007 by Eboo Patel
Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston
Reviews
“This autobiography captures how an angry youth can be transformed…into a profound leader for the cause of peace”—Publishers Weekly
“Highly recommended…one of the best first-person stories of youth activism, interfaith cooperation, and how to be both authentically American and Muslim”—Library Journal (starred review)
“[O]ffers us a powerful way to deal with one of the most important issues of our time” —President Bill Clinton
Author's Biography
Eboo Patel was born in India. He grew up outside Chicago.