Mohamed’s Ghosts: A Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland

In May 2004, the FBI and local Philadelphia police raided the Ansaarullah mosque and arrested its imam, Mohamed Ghorab, on the charges that his first marriage had been fraudulent; he was eventually deported to Egypt. The incident is the focus of Salisbury’s harrowing but shapeless book, which examines the devastation of Philadelphia’s Muslim community after the government investigation and anti-Arab hysteria after 9/11. A Pulitzer Prize–winning staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer , Salisbury builds the text around the personal stories of the many people he interviewed over four years; along the way, he delivers harsh criticism of the government’s investigative techniques and draws explicit parallels to his own family’s experiences with government surveillance in the late 1960s. Though digressive and anecdotal, the text acquires cumulative power, especially in its vivid portrayals of Imam Ghorab, whom it follows from his childhood, and his wife, Meriem Moumen, who discovered religion as a single mother in her 20s. Their heartbreaking story gives this frequently diffuse text a human center. (June)