He was attracted to Islam because he thought it was "color-blind," and he converted at the age of 18. He frequented an Iranian student center run by Bahram Nahidian. During the early 1970s he spent time visiting prisons around Washington, D.C., to "bring the message of Islam to black inmates." He met Said Ramadan, an Egyptian lawyer and Islamic scholar, in 1975, and Ramadan later became his mentor. An article in the "New Yorker" quotes him stating that as an "angry and alienated" African-American, "my biggest aspiration was to bring America to its knees, but I didn't know how".