Eric Trager writes about his Muslim landlord in Egypt who fully expected his American renters to abide by Islam whether they were Muslims or not. (Thanks to del.)

Of all the Muslims I met during my nine months in Egypt who had visited Mecca, only my landlord insisted on being called “haggi,” or “one who has made the pilgrimage.” Haggi Mustafa, as even his teenage son called him, was a deeply devout man. Given the healthy respect for religion that had brought me to Cairo to study Islam in the first place, this is a characteristic I would have normally appreciated. But I quickly learned that Mustafa expected comparable devoutness from his tenants — a task that his three American rent-payers had no intention of fulfilling.

It was an issue I should have anticipated from the moment I signed the contract in September 2006. As I finished reading through the poor English translation of the Arabic document, Mustafa demanded my attention. “No girls, and no whiskey,” he said. It seemed like the kind of thing a residential adviser tells incoming college freshmen — a rule that one states out of obligation, rather than the expectation that it will be followed. Without hesitation, I nodded.

Yet Mustafa’s wife, clad head-to-toe in black with only her eyes visible through the niqab face covering, knew better. “Are they Muslims?” she asked. “I believe in God,” I replied to Mustafa’s giddy nod, delivering the line I had been taught for these uncomfortable situations and neglecting to mention my Jewish heritage. Still, Mustafa’s wife pressed on. “You must become Muslim,” she said. “Maybe,” I responded, naïvely believing that Mustafa and his wife couldn’t possibly be serious.

I was profoundly mistaken....