John Walker's Curious Quest

December 13, 2001--John Walker's ill-fated journey from a Marin County suburb to an Afghan dungeon began as a curious teenager's spiritual quest--to understand a religion that at first glance did not seem so different from the faith of his father.

Walker, 20, was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, and his fascination with Islam coincided with the confusion any teenager feels in the midst of a messy parental divorce. His exploration of the Muslim faith was serious, sincere and anything but bellicose, friends and religious sources maintain.

That search ended in rigid religious schools in Pakistan and the bloody battlefields of Afghanistan. It was there that Walker somehow found his way into the ranks of Osama bin Laden's soldiers, with whom he was captured a week ago during a prison revolt in a mud-walled fort in Afghanistan. How he made the leap from student to self-described holy warrior is a mystery.

On the long road from Marin to Mazar-e-Sharif, Walker stumbled across tabligh jamaat, a Muslim revival movement known for total dedication in its ranks. While his involvement with tabligh jamaat may have inspired him to visit Pakistan, government investigators and Bay Area Muslims doubt that any shadowy agents of terror approached him in California.

"It doesn't appear at all that he was recruited here, that there were any cells or groups that told him to go over there and fight," said Andrew Black, FBI spokesman in San Francisco.

Black said the man now dubbed the "American Taliban" was--at least during his time in California--apparently "just someone who needed to belong to something, and he found Islam."

His real Islamic education began as a search for religious purity and spiritual certainty at three Bay Area mosques--one in Mill Valley and two in San Francisco.

Ebrahim Nana, one of the leaders of the Mill Valley Islamic Center, said Walker did not really stand out among the rest of the teenage crowd at his quiet suburban mosque.

"He wasn't blond or blue-eyed," Nana said. "Most people probably assumed he was the son of an Arab immigrant.

"I remember him coming to the mosque when he first accepted Islam. His mother would drop him off, and my son would take him home. He was just one of the kids."

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