Word: islamically
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Apparently it was The Autobiography of Malcolm X that inspired Walker to convert to Islam. He talked with his parents about his plans. Frank Lindh, now a lawyer with Pacific Gas & Electric, was accepting. Marilyn Walker had reservations. "She was concerned," says Marilyn's friend Stephanie Hendricks. "You have a 16-year-old kid who gets involved in any kind of religion in a passionate way, and you're going to want to know more about it, right...
John did not have a driver's license and was still in high school, so attending prayer services five times a day was out of the question. On Friday nights, though, he would change out of his Western clothes and attend services at the Islamic Center of Mill Valley. Abdullah Nana usually drove him there. Nana, now 23, recalls that when he first saw Walker, he stood out immediately, not simply because he was a white man in a mostly Indian congregation but also because he was "on his own," meaning already devoted to Islam and without a referral from...
...told Nana that he had found an Arabic-language school in San'a, Yemen, on the Internet. "The language spoken in Yemen is closer to the holy language of the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet," explains Nana. Walker also felt it would be easier to practice Islam in a Muslim country. In December 1998 he left for the Middle East...
...something of a miracle. Were his parents really onboard with all this? With the new name? The move to Yemen? Frank Lindh says yes. "He was always intellectually coherent, and he had a wonderful sense of humor," Lindh told reporters. "And none of that changed when he converted to Islam. I never had any major misgivings...
When Walker returned to California around Christmas 1999, he found his parents had separated. He saw Nana and told him that Yemen hadn't met his expectations. "They weren't as orthodox as he thought--they weren't as strict on Islam as he thought," says Nana. But to Abdul Wadood, a 20-year-old Muslim friend who also met Walker at the Mill Valley mosque, John sounded fulfilled. Through his e-mail communications, he told Wadood he felt "free" because he didn't have any material possessions. Wadood says his friend never experienced culture shock because...