The Associated Press has a new story out about me, my case, and my release from prison: "Randall Royer grew up in the Midwest, a suburban St. Louis kid. By the time he was 21, he had converted to Islam and changed his name to Ismail Royer, fighting in Bosnia alongside fellow Muslims against Serbian ethnic cleansing...."

When you hear about someone leaving Islam, you may imagine it has something to do with religious beliefs. On some technical level it surely does. But I think the reason usually has nothing to do with, say, rational rejection of one of the six pillars of faith. Rather, most people I've known who left Islam did so because they became disillusioned. And nothing causes a Muslim to feel disillusioned about Islam but the bad character of other Muslims.

When I was confined in ADX Florence, the most secure and restrictive prison in the United States, I conducted an eighteen-month long debate with Richard Reid, aka the Shoebomber, through notes we passed between us. Here are some of those notes...

The Islam of the American Muslim community is morphing into a cultural identity whose defining components are not spiritual and moral substance but rather victimhood and resentment of the dominant culture’s “oppression.”

I converted to Islam at a stage in my life in which I was obsessed with the struggle for social justice. This was the era of Iran-Contra, the first Gulf War, and the Rodney King riots. I’d taken my knowledge of history from Noam Chomsky and of current events from the Dead Kennedys and Public Enemy. At that time I’d been having a lot of debates with a Muslim friend of mine over the existence of God and the value of religion. Through very subtle and beautiful arguments he awakened in my soul the awareness of God’s reality. And he advised me that I should become a Muslim, in part, because Islam was the best way to achieve justice in a society I felt was sorely missing it.

When I was transferred in 2015 to a new prison, I met a young Pakistani brother that I took a liking to. Like me, he had been convicted of providing material support to the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, although I’d been in prison much longer than him, and the “support” he’d contributed was so ephemeral that it rendered his 13-year sentence a mockery of justice...

"Defendant’s sneering argument that plaintiff is not prejudiced by all this delay by defendant because he remains incarcerated is beyond the Court’s comprehension. The whole point of this litigation is whether defendant can continue to single out plaintiff for special treatment as a terrorist during his continued period of incarceration. Did any supervising attorney ever read this nonsense that is being argued to this Court?"

When I was fourteen I knew a girl who always had some devastating personal issue or another to unload on me. Her brother was always trying to kill himself, or her parents hated her, or she was running away from home or something. Being the nice, bleeding heart guy that I am, I always felt compelled to listen to her endless whining and try to help her in some way. But of course I never really liked her, I never really respected her. How can you respect someone drowning in self-pity? It's human nature to be repulsed by undignified people...

In a very practical sense, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were a tremendous success. September 11, 2001, dramatically advanced the agenda of a tiny group of radicals who perceive that the only way to achieve their goals is by driving the worlds of Islam and Christianity into a cataclysmic confrontation...

It's time for us to reassess our strategy. The shortsightedness of Islamic public policy organizations in the United States is glaring in light of the consequences of September 11, 2001: public suspicion of Muslims, the rise of a tyrannical Justice Department, and emboldened anti-Muslim bigotry...