A Time to Reflect on Spiritual Journeys

Moore also enrolled in the Saudi-run Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences in Fairfax to learn Arabic, because he wanted to read Islam's scriptures in their original language.

Sellars, 35, who works as an audiovisual artist at the California-based Zaytuna Institute, an Islamic educational center, said he was not surprised that his longtime friend threw himself into studying Arabic after his conversion, since that was his approach to everything.

"All of a sudden, there's all these Post-It notes of Arabic all over the wall [of his bedroom]," Sellars recalled. "It was pretty amazing for me to see that quality of doing everything right transferred to his approach to Islamic studies."

Sellars said that Moore displayed the principles of Ramadan even as he moved to accept Islam. "Ramadan is about stopping, cutting off certain aspects of your normal life to think about that which is higher and that which is deep within yourself," Sellars said.

As Moore began to seriously consider converting, "there were certain aspects of his life that he put aside, people who had negative influences . . . who were just about partying, getting high, getting drunk," Sellars said. "The core principle of Ramadan, of doing without and looking within, he was already manifesting some of those qualities . . . in his journey for the truth."

When the Fairfax institute offered Moore a scholarship to study in Medina, Saudi Arabia, he grabbed it -- because to live in the town that Muhammad called home for several years is "the dream of every Muslim," Moore said.

He arrived in Medina in 1996. "When I first got there, I was pretty much in awe. I truly, honestly believed . . . that the only scholars on the face of the Earth that had anything to truly say about Islam were . . . Saudi-related in some way," he said. Theirs, he thought, was "the true Islam."

But in his third year of studies, he started having doubts about the Wahhabi version of Islam taught at Medina. He saw "inconsistencies" in some of his professors' teachings, he said, and was perplexed by the way they selectively chose scriptural stories to back up their ideas but left out others that contradicted them.

Determined to explore Islam on his own, Moore began reading respected ancient Muslim scholars whose views were contrary to the Wahhabi outlook. He also listened to a taped lecture by Hamza Yusuf, the founder of the Zaytuna Institute and a leading figure in the American Muslim community.

"Sparks started to go off, like maybe [his Saudi professors were] pulling the wool over my eyes," Moore recalled thinking. "Maybe there is another version of Islamic history and another version of Islam."

When he started pulling away from the Wahhabi approach, some of his fellow students, including American and British colleagues, called Moore an unbeliever and an "innovator" -- a sin in Wahhabi thought.

In 1999, he decided to study Islam elsewhere and traveled to Mauritania, Morocco, Yemen and Egypt. He worked at an Islamic educational center in Abu Dhabi for a while. During his travels, he returned in the summer to study English and religious studies at George Mason University, where obtained a bachelor's degree in 2001.

To develop "a truly Muslim identity within the American context," Moore said, Muslims in the United States need to combine what is best from their Islamic traditions and their American culture.

Moore, who no longer shuns music, is looking forward to the rigors of Ramadan. Although his current reading assignments from St. John's include "King Lear" and "The Canterbury Tales," he said he will strive to complete the traditional Ramadan practice of reading the Koran, a book of more than 6,000 verses, "from cover to cover" over the next 30 days.

He also, of course, will be fasting from dawn to sunset, a sacrifice that the Koran teaches is prescribed for Muslims "in order that you should become God-conscious," Moore said.

"Ramadan is a very personal affair," he added, noting that no one but God knows if you are truly fasting or sneaking a bite to eat. "Everyone can see that you're praying," he said. "But fasting -- how can you tell?"