Young U.S. Muslims Strive for Harmony

Longing for Change

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For Basim Hawa, religion had been built in but not deeply felt.

He grew up in a house on the border of Arlington and Fairfax counties, the middle of five children. Every morning and evening, his father went to Dar al Hijrah, a mosque in Falls Church, to pray.

"He used to try to make us go when we were younger," recalled Hawa, a strapping 27-year-old with closely cropped black hair, a full beard and an easy smile. "We went to Saturday school to learn to study Koran in the Arabic language, and my dad would always try to make us speak it around the house. He would always make us pray, so that was something built into us from an early age."

Hawa prayed five times a day because he was supposed to. But he often postponed the prayers until nighttime and would rush through without concentrating. "I never had doubt of my religion," he said. "But it just wasn't always on my mind."

Other things were. At J.E.B. Stuart High School and in college at Virginia Tech, he said, he hung out with friends who "went out a lot, went out to clubs, dated, partied. My parents until today still do not know a lot of the things I did."

For years, he tried to excuse his behavior. "Because I prayed, because I fasted at Ramadan, I always used to think to myself that what I'm doing is not so bad."

But he was tormented by thoughts of the life he felt he should be leading. At night, he prayed to God to change him. "I would wake up and feel guilty. And as I went through life, I felt more guilty and more guilty and more guilty."

When the terrorists attacked, Hawa said, he didn't feel affected personally. He didn't have a beard, he said, and he didn't experience much backlash.

Then, a few weeks later, he traveled with his father to Jerusalem to visit relatives. While they were gone, government agents knocked at the family's door in Fairfax to ask his mother questions. Why had the father and son left the country? Where had they gone? What were they doing?

The visit jarred Hawa. He was as American as anyone, but now he was suspected of acting against national security. The agents didn't come back, but other Muslims he knew didn't get off so easily.

Hawa had attended Dar al-Hijrah, the same mosque as some of the men who were prosecuted as the "Virginia jihad network," although he said he didn't know them well. And he had listened to taped lectures by Ali al-Timimi, who was sentenced in 2005 to life in prison for inciting young Muslims to wage war against the United States.

Hawa dismissed the prosecutors' argument that the men were dangerous, saying although he does not know all the facts, he does not think the evidence was sufficient to convict them.