A Chaplain's Test of Faith

He was an enigma: an odd mix of principle and vice, if government allegations of his affairs were to be believed. When released, instead of making the traditional rounds on talk shows, he refused to speak about his case. He made dozens of public appearances at fundraisers benefiting Muslim American causes and his legal defense. At each, he thanked his audiences and warned them to know their civil rights, but never discussed the burning questions involving the injustices he had experienced.

Some supporters saw his silence as a lost opportunity to share what he knew of Guantanamo -- he was one of the few American soldiers with unfettered access to the detainees -- and to use his story as a cautionary tale in an era of eroding civil liberties.

Still, he didn't talk. Perhaps he was reeling from a media onslaught that had once branded him a traitor. Perhaps it was a marketing strategy. Or perhaps he wanted to control an intensely painful story that for so long was out of his control. The latter, he now says, is closer to the truth.

He offered little aid to journalists uncovering the flaws in the government's case. Instead, he came off as taciturn, seeming to play cat-and-mouse with them. "Be patient," he told some. "Perhaps you'll be the first to get the Chaplain Yee story."

Increasingly frustrated, journalists openly wondered whether he held the secrets of Guantanamo, or whether his refusal to talk suggested he had something to hide. He rejected both characterizations. He was a Muslim chaplain wounded by false accusations, he said. He wanted the message of his ordeal, and more important his religion, to be so carefully crafted that he refused to leave it in the hands of journalists.

"I didn't want to speak immediately upon my release, do some short interviews and have my story be a couple of sound bites and quotes," he says. "I wanted it presented as a whole. The ordeal itself was a seven-month experience, and my experience in Guantanamo was 10 months, so that's almost a year and a half. So I didn't want all of that to be a real quick, here you go, let's speak out about it. I wanted to take it all, put it in complete form, and present it."

The Pull of Islam

Yee was raised in Springfield, N.J., one of five children of second-generation Chinese American parents. Each Sunday, his mother dragged the children to the nearby Lutheran church, but young Yee was more consumed with collecting baseball cards and sports. He "grudgingly attended."

Yee's high school wrestling coach urged him to go to West Point. Like many cadets, he attended Sunday services, but still felt little pull toward religion.

Not until after his 1990 graduation did he begin to feel the tug of Islam. A friend introduced him to it. After initially resisting, he began reading and talking to other soldiers who were Muslim converts. The religion held many of the things he already believed growing up Lutheran: "That Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, performed miracles, was a great teacher who instructed his followers to believe in one God." The greatest difference he found was that in Islam, Jesus was an important prophet, but not divine.

He found a "simplicity" to Islam, he writes. "The idea that there is one God who is the creator of all things."

In 1993, he left active duty to study his newfound religion, intent on one day returning to the Army as a Muslim chaplain. His pursuit took him to Syria, "one of the great learning centers of Islam," he writes. There, he could study a more moderate Islam than the ultraconservative form practiced in Saudi Arabia.

He returned to the Army in the fall of 2000 with a new wife (whom he met in Syria) and child, as one of a handful of Muslim chaplains. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, his career took a momentous turn. Base commanders called on him to help ease tension in the ranks between Muslim and non-Muslim soldiers. He began giving briefings on the tenets of Islam, teaching that it was a religion of peace, not a conduit of terrorism. His commanders praised his efforts. Soon, the Pentagon began sending reporters his way.