The conversion of American soldiers is one of the strange, little-told stories of that war. I encountered it firsthand during the course of research for my recent book Twentynine Palms about two girls who were killed by a Marine shortly after the Gulf War in Twentynine Palms, Calif. In the early '90s, over drinks in a Marine bar, I met several Gulf War veterans who had converted to Islam while serving in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. (Yes, in spite of their conversion, they were still drinking; for Marines, some things never change.) Like Mohammed, the prophet they now followed, they had wandered into the dunes and seen the light.

Although it was only a few Marines who told me of their Gulf War conversions to Islam, their stories were intriguing. For these Marines—all of them black—Islam was a refuge during the Gulf War, a way to dissent from U.S. policy. Two said they had been drawn to Islam because of the racism of a military that sent "all the black men to the front." Another told me, "This isn't my war"—echoing Muhammad Ali's sentiment during the Vietnam War that "No Vietnamese ever called me nigger."

Another Marine told me that while serving in Desert Storm, he had refused to take up arms against Iraqis. Consequently, he was ordered to remain with one of the rear companies, which was when he visited a da'wah, or propaganda tent, set up by the Saudis to convert troops on the spot. There had been many such conversions, he said. The Saudis were all over the scores of men and women who, like my source, were sent to the rear. The Saudis made an aggressive effort to convert GIs—plying them with expensive gifts and even cash, according to a report by Rick Francona, a retired Air Force colonel and interpreter to Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War. At least hundreds of American soldiers, and perhaps as many as 3,000, converted to Islam during the war. The majority were black, the rest Indo-Pakistani, Arab, and white. Most of those Gulf War converts have presumably finished their military service by now.