“You can’t charge me with that because you have no proof of that! He is a liar! I have witnesses! There were a hundred witnesses! A thousand witnesses! Burglary? What do you mean burglary? How do you come up with this bogus charge? What, do you think I’m ignorant? I have rights! You have no right to have me in this car right now! Because you have no—show me the evidence that you have! Other than some lying, crazy Islamophobic.” For the next 20 minutes, Muslet cycles rapidly through confusion, righteous anger, respectful deference, and threats of a lawsuit. “I’m a Palestinian, wears a rag on his head,” he continues, “wears a thawb, I mention Allah—Allah’s the name of the almighty creator, Allahu Akbar—that’s his name. And you don’t even know his name. What’s God’s name? Walking around, taking orders, shooting people. Who’s in charge?” At one point, Muslet denounces the sheriff’s deputies as “a bunch of Islamophobic racists.”

Watching this in court, the judge chuckled. “I’m going to teach a class,” he said. “What not to do if you’re arrested.”

The last person to testify was Hal Howard. He sat with his hands folded neatly in his lap, hunched slightly forward, like someone in church. His account of the confrontation with Muslet differed, in certain key details, from the version he gave me, as well as from the one he first offered Deputy Castaldo. Now, instead of Muslet shaking him with his right hand, Muslet used his left hand to grab him by the wrist. Instead of Howard having to pry their hands apart, Muslet let go on his own. Instead of Muslet leading his children silently into the house, Muslet told them, “Get out of the road before he kills you.” Despite all the inconsistencies, Howard seemed to genuinely believe his own account of events. He again said—somewhat touchingly—that Lucey would corroborate his version of events.

The prosecution, for its part, tried to avoid any mention of religion. But the topic kept working its way into the trial. At one point, Small asked Howard why the conversation with Muslet had scared him.

“Well, I’m a Christian, number one,” Howard replied. “I believe Jesus Christ died for my sins. And I have a father in heaven. And none of them has even a nickname called Allah.”

Small quickly tried to steer the line of questioning back on course. “But what was it about the, uh, defendant’s demeanor—”

“I felt like he was trying to force Allah onto me,” Howard interrupted. “He wanted to come to my church and teach everybody about Allah.”

The defense, by contrast, sought out this angle wherever it could find it. Toward the end of questioning, Bertisch noted that Lucey had wished Muslet a merry Christmas.

Howard nodded. “God-blessed him, too.”

“Did you find that weird?”

“No. He’s American. Ninety percent of us believe in God. What’s wrong with saying God bless you? It’s on the dollar bill.”

“But you have an individual here who believes in a different god, correct?”

“I don’t know what he believes in,” Howard said. “I guess it’s a god.”

“Well, he told you he wanted to come to church to enlighten people about his god.”

“I don’t know about ‘enlightening’ anything.”

“You just thought,” Bertisch ventured, “he was going to force his god on you?”

“After he got through talking, yes,” Howard says. “That’s what I thought he wanted.”

In the course of his testimony, Howard comes across as both deeply averse to being preached at by a Muslim and committed to doing what he thinks is the right thing. At one point, he repeats that it was his sons and friends who urged him to report the handshake. But he also notes that he was inspired, in part, by a public service announcement he saw on television.

“I told them,” Howard said, referring to the sheriff’s office, “what I heard on the TV, about the FBI saying that no matter how small it is, you got to report it.”

The judge interjected. “So, when you say, ‘You should report things,’ was it, you know, he was an Arab or Muslim or something?”

“Anything suspicious,” Howard said. “When that—I guess it was the bombing or the killing down in California—they said those people had seen them supplying bullets and stuff. And anything you see that’s suspicious, or anything that happens suspicious, should be reported.”

After further questioning, it became apparent that Howard was referring to the mass shooting that took place on December 2, 2015, when a Muslim couple killed 14 people at an office Christmas party in San Bernardino, California. The shooting had occurred less than three weeks before Howard encountered Muslet after the Christmas party at his pastor’s house. Reporting Muslet was his way of trying to prevent such things from happening in Belle Glade.

“That’s the only way we’re going to find out what’s going on,” he told the court.

During the trial, it was hard not to see Muslet and Howard as spiritual twins. Their faith followed similar, classical lines. Both are men who, lost in sin, had undergone a sudden, unexpected conversion—delivered from doubt into what William James called a “state of assurance.” They remain devout in their faith, live self-denying lives, and believe that the end times are upon us. Two men in dying towns, residents of a burning world, had found a path to eternal life. When they met, their disagreement struck at the very center of who they are.

There was no evidence to suggest that Hal Howard was lying. He clearly believed that something violent had been done to him. And, in one sense, something had. Whatever the handshake had been like, Muslet had, consciously or not, taken a jackhammer to the bedrock of another man’s identity. Such a gesture, though conceived with peaceful intentions, could not have failed to feel threatening.

It’s easy to see Muslet and Howard as spiritual twins. Men in dying towns, residents of a burning world, they both found a path to eternal life.

The question of what, precisely, happened between Howard and Muslet can’t be answered with any certainty. But what came afterward was clearly shaped in large part by the wider political battle being waged over Islam. It’s possible that Muslet’s religious beliefs played no role in his prosecution. But in Palm Beach—once the training ground for the September 11 attackers, now a center for anti-Islamic hate groups—Howard’s account was deemed more plausible than Muslet’s. Though uncorroborated by any evidence, Howard’s version of events seemed correct to police and prosecutors, enough to pursue a case to trial and force a local businessman and civic activist to consider, for almost a year, the possibility that he would be taken away from his family and placed in prison for the rest of his life.

In his ruling on the case, Judge Peter Evans made clear that his ability to render a verdict was hindered by a lack of clear evidence. “There was no investigation” he said. “I mean, what investigation? They went and talked to a couple guys.” He then ruminated aloud for several minutes about how best to weigh the need of law enforcement to protect public safety with the rights of citizens not to be the target of undue suspicion.

“It’s unfortunately the society that we live in,” the judge said. “A little nothing turns into a case where I’m supposed to convict this guy and send him to prison for life. Because he shook a guy’s hand too hard? I don’t know. Since 9/11, every time there’s an incident involving a Muslim, everyone’s on red alert. But there’s incidents every day.” The judge sighed. “How do you deal with this stuff? Right? All kidding aside, to me, this is really just sort of a fascinating societal issue. Because I see it every day in here. So how do you deal with it? On the one hand, you have the government, saying ‘Hey, you see any Muslim do something, you should report it,’ because, you know?”

At the same time, the judge said, Muslet should be slow to call people bigots.

“Instead of Mr. Muslet, for example, talking about ‘This is racism, you’re picking on me’—doesn’t there have to be some kind of understanding on the other side? These cops—well, maybe this isn’t the best example of a great investigation—but what are the cops doing? They’re doing their job. It’s their job to go arrest someone on a felony. Whether they should have or not is another issue. But they do what they do.”

The judge turned to Muslet, sitting in his thawb. “Meanwhile, he’s screaming, what? Islamo—”

“Islamophobia,” Muslet said.

“Islamophobia! So, yeah, it’s kinda got to go both ways, right? I don’t know.” The judge threw up his arms. “Good luck solving this one!” In the matter of the criminal case, though, he declared Muslet innocent.

Muslet, overcome, stood up.

“Can I—can I shake your hand, judge?”

There was an awkward silence, then laughter in the courtroom. The judge looked uncertain. Finally, he motioned to his judicial robes. “Well, we’re both wearing dresses,” he said.

Muslet was deeply relieved at his acquittal. He claims, however, never to have been in doubt about the outcome. “Allah wouldn’t do that to me,” he says. Then he pauses. “Unless, of course, that was what he wanted. But I don’t think it was.”

Not long after the trial, Muslet stopped by the home of Dr. Kaki, Hal Howard’s beloved physician. The two men hail from the same village in Palestine, and have known each other for years. “I told him ‘Hey, one of your patients tried to put me away for life,’ ” says Muslet. “He was pretty surprised.”

Just before I leave Belle Glade, Muslet gives me a tour of the town. He shows me where, on the main street, he wants to install a storefront mosque, to call the Muslim shopkeepers to prayer, and where he wants to open a halal restaurant. Farther out, we pass the leviathan sugar mill, its stacks spewing white smoke. In the distance, poppy-yellow crop dusters buzz the fields. The streets are dotted with campaign signs for Muslet’s opponent for city commissioner. Muslet hasn’t had time to put up any signs of his own, but he remains optimistic about the election.

“I think people are ready to take on Big Sugar,” he says. “The sugar companies, they’ve been making millions for years, and what do we get back?” He is quiet for a while, staring out the window. “I just wanna see people come up, man. Live good lives.”

When we reach Muslet’s house, his kids are playing in the backyard. His wife smiles and waves. Muslet points at the roof of the home of Howard’s pastor, Eric Stevenson. On the apex sits a big, plastic nativity scene. Muslet’s kids and the pastor’s kids play together, but the two men aren’t friends. Shortly after the pastor moved in, he threw a lawn party whose guests included young teenagers.

“Separating mosque from state? I agree with that,” Muslet says. “But you can’t separate God from state, because God is a way of life.”

“The girls are wearing these short shorts and there are young men out there, too,” Muslet frowns. “And they’re doing things like kissing and—intimate things.”

During the party, Muslet walked over to Stevenson’s house. “I said, ‘Hey Eric, I wanna ask you a question….’ He said, ‘Yeah?’ I said, ‘Eric, what’s your God’s name?’ ” The conversation followed a predictable trajectory. It strikes me that giving dawah seems to be something Muslet does when he feels annoyed.

“Everyone gets dawah—Muslim, Jew, Christian, police, FBI,” Muslet says. “It’s what I do.”

I ask Muslet whether he understands why people who are used to a secular form of government might be alarmed at the prospect of sharia.

“I understand separating church from state, and I agree with it,” he says. “Separating mosque from state? I agree with that. But you can’t separate God from state, because God is a way of life. I don’t have a choice. I really don’t. I can’t force anyone to be Muslim, but it’s my obligation to share it with people. Now, will sharia law ever be—.” He stops. “Actually, it is going to be implemented, because Allah is gonna implement it. Eventually. I want the Messiah to come, to confirm to the people. I’m ready for him, because he’s the one they’re going to believe. Everything that’s happened, all the signs. He’s coming back.”

A few weeks after I leave Florida, the election for commissioner is held. Muslet receives 124 ballots, or approximately 12 percent of the vote. He calls it “a valuable learning experience.” His plans to Islamicize America with Wayne Rawlins remained undiminished.

Howard was disappointed at the verdict. “I didn’t expect them to send him to prison or nothing, but I thought they’d find him guilty,” he tells me. “Because he was guilty.” Howard isn’t worried about his own safety, however. “I don’t think God would let him hurt me.”

A month later, Howard felt severe chest pains. When he visited Dr. Kaki, the physician told Howard to go to the emergency room, immediately. When he arrived, doctors discovered a clogged artery in his neck. A three-inch stent was placed in his carotid artery. He credits Dr. Kaki with saving him from a stroke.

“I love that man,” he says. “I truly do.”