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The Saudi government saw an opportunity in the deployment. In an open field next to the main U.S. encampment, an impromptu bazaar had sprung up. The Saudi military requested permission from the U.S. military to set up a “Cultural Information Tent” on the site so that the troops could learn more about Saudi culture.3

Although Saudi officials assured U.S. commanders that the program was a simple introduction to Arab culture, it was in reality an epic-scale evangelical effort.4 Leading this revival was Bilal Philips, now a member of the Saudi Air Force’s religion brigade. As Philips recalled it, the intent of the program was simply to provide information about Islam.

In the course of time, a number of people after listening decided to accept Islam, and that number started to increase and increase ’til we were averaging something around twenty converts per day. And, uh, the tent quickly became to be known amongst the chaplains as the Conversion Tent. Although this was not specifically our intention, was not necessarily to convert them but to convey information.

But it just so happened that the number of those who were interested or those who had come and got information, either they had previously investigated something about Islam and, you know, this further information just completed what they were looking for and this convinced or they came and were open-minded enough, they heard this and felt this is what they believed or something closer or made more sense to them or whatever.5

That was how Philips remembered the program in 2010 during an interview with the author. In 2003 he had told a somewhat different story to an Arabic-language newspaper based in London.

[A Saudi official] had a strong urge to convert U.S. soldiers into Islam. But, he did not speak English well. So he sought my help in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain. Since that date, I began giving religious lectures to U.S. soldiers on Islam.6

Philips helped assemble a team that spoke English fluently. The Camp for Cultural Information operated twenty-four hours a day for nearly six months, with imams living on-site and working a rotating schedule.

“At first we prepared the soldiers mentally,” Philips said in the 2003 interview. One of the team’s members “with experience in broadcasting and American psychology” addressed groups of 200 to 250 soldiers at a time, preparing the ground.7

The team also arranged for soldiers to visit Saudi families and witness group prayers in Saudi mosques. Some were even taken to see government-sanctioned beheadings (part of the Saudi criminal system). All of this activity was made possible by a standing order from one of the U.S. base’s commanders that allowed Muslim soldiers—including the newly converted—to take a four-day pass to visit Mecca through the program. Expenses were covered by the Saudi government.8

During one of these field trips, Philips ran into an African American Muslim named Tahir who “just happened” to be in Mecca performing the Umrah, a lesser pilgrimage to the Grand Mosque. Tahir was a Vietnam veteran who later fought alongside jihadists in Afghanistan and had a natural affinity for his fellows in the military.9 Tahir joined the Saudi camp and helped preach about Islam to the soldiers.

The program was a resounding success. By Philips’s account, the team converted about three thousand U.S. soldiers to Islam, collecting names and addresses of converts and steering them toward Islamic centers back in the United States.10 Other sources pegged the number at sixteen hundred.11 It was an impressive tally either way.

In 1992 Philips was asked to deploy his U.S. military contacts for an “off the books” mission on behalf of Muslims in Bosnia who had become embroiled in a civil war.

I was approached by a couple of military people and asked if I knew of any of the troops that had accepted Islam, gone back to the States and had left the American military, you know, who might be willing to go to Bosnia to help train the Bosnians. What they said they were looking for was