NEWARK, N.J. _ On a rainy morning, Imran Rabbani returned to the Essex County Juvenile Detention Center so he could reunite with his former keepers.
Four years before, Rabbani had arrived at the facility in shackles after being swept up in an Islamic State-inspired plot to set off a pressure-cooker bomb in New York. He was 17.
Now, just starting his third semester at New York University, the 22-year-old Rabbani wanted to give thanks to the people who guided him away from Islamist extremism. As he waited in the library last summer, glancing at books that had proved crucial to his transformation, the room slowly filled with city officials, staff and guards.
Rabbani spotted Capt. Robert Woodson and leaned in for a hug. After they embraced, Rabbani began sharing memories. The room quickly fell silent as people fixed their eyes on the pair.
"Remember how you'd allow me and other inmates to eat snacks while we watched 'The Wire' inside the library? And that other time you allowed me to pray in private and then call my mom?" Rabbani asked.
"I remember," Woodson replied. "You and the other inmates were like my children. I love all of you."
Rabbani placed his hand on Woodson's shoulder as tears fell down both their faces.
"I never expected a prison guard, let alone a captain, to treat me like that and with kindness," he said.
Looking back on his time in custody, Rabbani now sees that kindness and education as the keys to what friends, family and law enforcement say was an unexpected transformation _ a change that ultimately helped deepen and enrich his identity as an American Muslim.
The son of Pakistani immigrants, Rabbani struggled to fit in while growing up in New York. He felt like an outsider, never fully identifying as American or Pakistani.
Stress was the common denominator in Rabbani's life. Money was always tight, and Rabbani, his parents and three siblings squeezed into a one-bedroom apartment in Flushing. When Rabbani finally made friends, his father disapproved of them and urged him to abide by more conservative Pakistani traditions.
As he searched for answers, Rabbani met Munther Omar Saleh, who was three years older and lived a few buildings away.
It was 2015 and a U.S.-led coalition was beginning to conduct airstrikes against Islamic State, also known as ISIS, after it took control of large swaths of Syria and Iraq. Federal prosecutors would later allege in court documents that Saleh was researching how to build a bomb to carry out a terrorist attack.
Rabbani would later say he knew nothing of Saleh's plans, at least not then. Their friendship deepened and profoundly affected how Rabbani viewed the world.
The charismatic Saleh said Muslims were persecuted by Jews and Christians and suggested that Islamic State was establishing Islam the way the Prophet Muhammad intended.
At first, such talk made Rabbani uncomfortable. But after a few months, the alarm going off inside Rabbani's head slowly faded. For the first time, he would recall years later, Rabbani felt someone accepted him. He didn't want to lose that feeling of belonging.
In 2015, Rabbani and Saleh were often volunteering at Masjid Al-Falah, a mosque in Queens.
Sometimes they spent the night at the mosque, debating different teachings in Islam. They discussed hadiths, written accounts of the Prophet Muhammad's sayings and actions that Muslims use as a source of moral guidance and religious law.
One time, Saleh read a translation of a hadith that he said instructed Muslims to join Islamic State:
"A nation will come from the east with black flags ... if anyone of you finds this nation, then you must join them even if you have to crawl over ice," Rabbani recalled Saleh telling him.
"This isn't the Islam I know," Rabbani thought at first.
But Rabbani began reading articles and watching videos produced by Islamic State online, and he continued to turn to Saleh for advice, nicknaming him "Mufti," a Muslim legal expert.
"I've been looking more into it ... we should talk in person," Rabbani texted Saleh one evening, according to court documents. Islamic State's ideology, he added, "just makes sense."
"You mean establishing Islam the same way the Prophet ... did? We can meet up whenever your free," Saleh replied.
"Yeah and dude it's like their doing it step by step and perfectly ... the exact ways and rules of the prophet," Rabbani texted back.
