My Year Inside Radical Islam is a memoir of first a spiritual and then a political seduction. Raised by parents who were Jewish by birth but dismissive of strict dogma, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross yearned for a religion that would suit all his ideals. At college in the late nineties he met a charismatic Muslim student who grounded his political activism with thoughtful religious conviction. Gartenstein-Ross reflects on his experience of converting to Islam - a process that began with a desire to connect with both a religious community and a spiritual practice and eventually led him to sympathise with the most extreme interpretations of the faith, with the most radical political implications. In the year following graduation, Gartenstein-Ross went to work for the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a charity dedicated to fostering Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia’s austere form of Islam - a theological inspiration for many terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda. Shortly after he left al-Haramain - when his own fanaticism had waned - the foundation was charged by the U.S. government as being a source of funds for terrorist organisations. Gartenstein-Ross, by this time a lawyer at a prominent firm, volunteered to be questioned by the FBI. They already knew who he was. The story of how good faith can be distorted and a decent soul can be seduced away from its principles, My Year Inside Radical Islam provides a rare glimpse into the personal interface between religion and politics.