Book Review/Storm Over Morocco
Search for universal religion ends in imprisonment
Storm Over Morocco
Finding God in the Midst of Fanatics
By Frank Romano
World Audiences, Inc. publisher
Paperback $17.99
By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review
It took Frank Romano, a native Oregonian, 25 years to write "Storm Over Morocco," a first person narrative about his misadventure when he was invited to study Islam and immersed himself in the religion, at that time, he truly thought was the universal religion. He would soon change that idea when he asked too many questions in 1978 of a militant Moslem group that promptly imprisoned him and accused him of being a Zionist spy. He was tried for sabotage, a capital crime.
"My questions as to the treatment of women served as a catalyst for one of the Islamic gurus to unjustly charge me with being a Zionist spy and sabotage," he said. "I was eventually acquitted by an internal inquisitorial tribunal, but remained a prisoner behind the towering walls of the mosque located in the outskirts of Casablanca."
Romano will talk in depth about his experiences and autograph books on Saturday, June 7 from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Norton Brothers Book Company in the Roseburg Valley Mall, 1444 N.W. Garden Valley Blvd.
The author is a tenured professor at the University of Paris and a member of the California and Marseille Bar Associations. "Storm Over Morocco" is an autobiographical narrative, one he said provoked "uncontrollable emotion and (I) cried many tears before reaching the end."
He said the book does not criticize Islam and often portrays him as a student who learned a great deal from that religion, but it does not paint a friendly picture of the religion and its people.
It does recount his desperate escape from an Islamic sect that imprisoned him and recalls his daring attempts to escape the 10-foot high compound of the mosque where he was held prisoner.
This all started from an impressionable first year student of philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris where his sponge-like mind was mesmerized by the lectures that opened a new and intellectually stimulating world, far different than the one he had experienced growing up in Healdsburg, Oregon and Northern California. This educational pursuit would lead him to investigate different religions, notably the fundamentalist variety. He was interested, he said, in finding a universal religion, which he believed was essential for world peace.
Romano’s father was an Italian-American who converted to the Baha’i faith. "My dad planted the seeds," he said. A World War II
Army lieutenant who witnessed the butchery in battles against the Japanese, he said his father left his own religion to find one dedicated to peace.
He admits that, "I was as vulnerable as a child on the very first day of school. Somehow I knew I was going through some kind of cultural, mental and spiritual rebirth." This led him to Morocco in search of the "supreme truth," but what he found was to be far from it.
The book recounts how he studied the Quran and Arabic and practiced meditation. A group he had met invited him to study and meditate at a mosque. "The first week was great. We’d pray five times a day," he said, but then one day the door was closed and guarded. Romano was taught that Jews and Christians were infidels. He later discovered the group was associated with a strict fundamentalist Sunni sect known as Salafi, which is similar to the Wahhabism that produced Osama bin Laden.
Although immersed in the Islamic faith through this experience, including living as a Moslem in a mosque dressed like and performing daily prayer rituals of monks, he said he "was able to withstand total conversion to an extreme version of Islam due to (his)profound knowledge of different religions and the desire to focus and meditate on the common denominators among them."
His spiritual superior, a man named Hanify, soon made clear that only unquestioning obedience was acceptable, and the sect was one in which nobody could leave.
The more exciting part of the book is how Romano eventually escaped and went back to Paris where he continued his studies and became a lawyer, married and lived in the North Beach Italian neighborhood of San Francisco. Today he lives and teaches in Paris.
Romano says he doesn’t regret his journey. He says that even in the midst of fanaticism he found answers to some of his spiritual questions, and he emerged from his quest a changed man.
Romano said he still believes the message in "Storm Over Morocco," is that peace can only come through uniting Islam, Judaism, Christianity and all religions. Preaching love, he said, "is our calling, as the profoundly and fundamentally good people that we are."
(Bill Duncan can be reached at bduncan@newsreview.info or by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470.)