John Walker's parents supported their scholarly son's conversion to
Islam. But there were signs his views were turning militant.
An American teenager's road to becoming a Taliban fighter

BY RENEE KOURY, ALEXIS CHIU
AND LORI ARATANI
Mercury News

When the 16-year-old son of a corporate lawyer arrived at the door of
the Mill Valley Islamic Center in 1997, he had already made the
transition to a new life.

Dressed in white robes and pillbox hat and wearing a beard, he was no
longer John Phillip Walker Lindh, the teenage rap aficionado who
dreamed of being a rock star. He was Suleyman Al-Lindh, a young
Islamic convert eager to learn as much as he could about his adopted
faith.

His fellow worshipers at the mosque remembered him as a devoted young
scholar. Walker, they recalled, seemed even more committed to the
study of Islam than those who had been raised in the tradition.

Now, four years later, television networks are broadcasting a
different picture of the young man who grew up in privilege in Marin
County.

The image is that of a defiant, dirt-caked Taliban soldier, telling a
reporter that he volunteered to fight in Afghanistan to help build a
``pure Islamic state,'' or refusing to respond to CIA agents
questioning him in an Afghan prison compound, just before a bloody
revolt in which other prisoners killed one of the agents.

John Phillip Walker Lindh or Suleyman Al-Lindh? Taliban warrior or, as
headlines blast, a traitor and rat? Dangerous anti-American extremist,
as many Americans are judging, or innocent young man taken in by a
charismatic movement, as his family insists?

Search for answers
How does spiritual quest lead to war?
As the U.S. government decides what to do with John Walker (he uses
the name of his divorced mother, Marilyn Walker), many questions
remain about how the young American's search for religious
enlightenment led him into the middle of a distant civil war, on the
side fighting his native country.

Experts in adolescent development say it's not unusual for teenagers
to look for meaning or to search for a place where they feel they
belong. While they may feel passionate about a cause or interest,
sometimes the fervor wanes in months or even weeks. But Walker's
interest remained strong. David Pinault, an associate professor of
religious studies at Santa Clara University, said that's common among
those who choose to convert to a religion because they've made a
conscious choice rather than having been raised in the tradition.

James Brosnahan, the attorney hired by the family to represent Walker,
said Friday that he was still trying to find out information about his
client's condition and is hoping to get clearance for him and the
family to visit.

Interviews with relatives and friends sketch a picture of a
disciplined young man in search of a purpose, who early on carved out
an unconventional path for himself. Along the way, he appears to have
revealed little about his background, even to those he considered
close friends.

Walker, former neighbors and friends said, was the product of a
conventional family that had an independent streak.

In suburban Maryland, where the Lindhs lived before moving to the Bay
Area when John was 10, neighbors remember that the family attended
Mass every Sunday and socialized with neighbors at annual block
parties.

Marilyn Walker was a stay-at-home mom. On Halloween, Frank Lindh, a
lawyer with the Department of Justice, would dress up in costume and
take his three children trick-or-treating. Around Christmas he often
baked brownies for neighbors.

But still, one neighbor, Christina Reichel, said, something about the
Lindhs set them apart in the quiet, buttoned-down, middle-class
neighborhood.

``I would describe them as very independent thinkers,'' said Reichel,
who still lives on Walden Road in Silver Spring, Md. ``They had what I
would call -- Marilyn more than Frank -- a more bohemian lifestyle.
They were too old to be hippies, but they were more casual, more
eclectic than most.''

In 1991, the family moved to California and Marin County, an area
known for its wealth and liberal politics. His father worked for a
private law firm before joining Pacific Gas & Electric as a lawyer
specializing in energy and public-utility law.

Friends say Marilyn Walker and Frank Lindh were loving parents who
encouraged their children to explore what intrigued them.

Their independent streak seemed to rub off on their middle child,
John. He tried Redwood High School in Larkspur but stayed only a
semester. In January 1997 he enrolled at Tamiscal High School, which
offered an independent-study program for very bright teenagers.

The school was demanding: Its 100 students were required to do five
hours a week of homework for each of the five or six courses they
took. For Walker, it was to be a year of transformation.

`Malcolm X'
Autobiography led to transformation
After reading ``The Autobiography of Malcolm X'' and writing a paper
on it, Walker became intrigued by Islam, according to a family friend.
Soon after, he announced to his parents that he was converting to
Islam; they were taken aback, but they supported his decision.

That November, the teenager appeared to have grown restless again. He
took and passed the high school proficiency exam and left school. In
June 1998, he did not attend Tamiscal's graduation but his name was
listed in the program: Suleyman Al-Lindh.

Sometime in 1997, Walker found his way to the Islamic Center and
Mosque of Mill Valley, housed in a former Baptist church on a quiet
street. The center had been founded in 1991 by Indian Muslims tired of
driving into San Francisco for prayers.

He was the only white among the mosque's 150 members. But that wasn't
the main thing that set him apart from others, said Abdullah Nana, a
close friend who said he often prayed and studied with Walker.

His religious ambitions surpassed that of the most devoted members of
the mosque, Nana said, and his hunger for more knowledge about Islam
seemed insatiable. He aspired to a goal that few Muslims even attempt:
To memorize the entire Koran, in Arabic, a language he didn't even
understand. Tamiscal's demanding program may have been good training:
He also was determined to learn Arabic.

Nana, who was 19 then, described his friend as a young man who had
grown up in an affluent suburb, only to become disgusted with Western
culture and driven to find greater meaning in life. Nana said Walker
often spoke of wanting to leave the United States to go to a place
where he could be totally devoted to Islam.

``He was fed up with the American way of life,'' recalled Nana, a
native of India. ``The Western way of life seemed unbearable for
him.''

The two rarely did anything unrelated to the mosque. Once they played
miniature golf. But they rarely talked about personal things. Walker's
parents were divorcing, but he didn't talk of it, Nana said.

``He said that before he found Islam, he was going to be a music star,
maybe a producer, but then as soon as he found Islam, he changed,''
Nana said. ``He wasn't interested in music any longer. Islam doesn't
allow music. Islam made him so happy. He found peace and happiness.''

Restless journey
A trip to Yemen to study Arabic
Though he seemed happy to have found Islam, Nana said, Walker was
restless to learn its doctrines more deeply. In late 1998, Walker
asked his parents for support so he could travel to Yemen to study
Arabic. Marilyn Walker and Frank Lindh paid for their 17-year-old
son's trip.

Walker maintained contact with his family via e-mail, sending amusing
notes about his life in the Middle East. In February 1999, he returned
home for a month, staying with his younger sister at the home of a
family friend, Bill Jones, in San Rafael. Jones said Walker and his
sister watched videos and took walks in the neighborhood.

Walker wore traditional Muslim clothing and was meticulous about
maintaining his beard and hair. Jones described him as ``shy and
serious.''

Walker's last visit home was a year later in February 2000. When he
returned to the Middle East, he told his parents he would be studying
in Pakistan.

Walker's parents say they never had any indication that their son had
begun to adopt a more radical view of Islam. But there seemed to be
subtle signs that his views were evolving from those of a young
scholar eager to learn Arabic to a student with a more radical
outlook.

Shortly after the USS Cole was bombed while docked in Yemen in October
2000, Frank Lindh remembered an uneasy e-mail exchange with his son,
he said in an interview with Newsweek last week.

While he expressed sadness about the death of U.S. sailors who were
about the same age as his son, Lindh said, his son suggested that
perhaps the United States was at fault -- and that by stopping to
refuel in an Islamic country the ship had ``committed an act of war.''

It was at that point, Lindh said, that he realized his son was
beginning to shape his own world view, independent of his parents'
outlook.

Still, the family never suspected that Walker would end up fighting
with the Taliban. When regular e-mail stopped arriving last summer,
both parents made the rounds of local mosques hoping for some
information about their son.

Now that Walker has been found, his parents are anxious to see him,
Brosnahan, the lawyer hired by the family to represent their son, said
Friday.

Brosnahan said he is still trying to find out information about
Walker. ``I don't think any of us knows where this thing is going,''
he said. ``We're just going to continue to try to communicate in hopes
that government reaches a point where they're ready to cooperate with
us. Meanwhile, the family is going day to day, doing the best they
can.''

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----
Contact Lori Aratani at larat...@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5531.