Bret Darren Lee was born to James D. Lee and Karen Arnold, to a southern White American family. According to Lee, after his parents broke up, his mother relocated from the then more prosperous "North County" of St. Louis County, Missouri, to the more multiracial South Side at Shaw, St. Louis and entered into an interracial relationship, baring several mixed-race half-siblings for Lee. In the 2000s, several of Lee's close family members have been killed in gang-related shootings; his sister's boyfriend, Shelby Polk III, an African-American man, was killed in Soulard on July 19, 2015 as part of a shooting. Lee's 19-year old nephew, an aspiring SoundCloud rapper named Shelbyon Polk, was also found dead with gunshot wounds to his torso on Thanksgiving Day 2017 in St Louis. Lee's mother, Karen Arnold, was murdered on December 18, 2018 in Kirkwood, Missouri by unknown assailants who broke into her apartment while she was sleeping and shot her.
Islamism
Coming from a white Protestant background, Lee converted to Sunni Islam in the 1990s and quickly associated himself to its most radical Salafi fringes. He studied under Abdul-Rahman Baseer, Ali al-Timimi and Anwar al-Awlaki. In 2007, Lee authored a ten post blog series entitled The Rise and Fall of the Salafi Movement, which focused mostly on Black converts to Salafism in the United States, in a lineage of interest in Islam which he traced from Malcolm X onward. Lee's writing about the movement, which was mostly "lamentful", portrayed a disillusionment with what it described as Salafists separation from "the real world", divisions, descent into religious-extremism, and control by Saudi Arabian Islamic scholars who were ill-equipped to advise and guide on American social and cultural matters. During this time, Lee's blog won the award for "best series" in the Brass Crescent Awards. This led to a feud with Dawud Adib, an African-American who had converted in the 1970s; he authored The History of the Salafi Da'wah in America in response, accusing Lee of being federal informant or an "agent provocateur", saying that Lee was "a criminal". Adib emphasised the need for "pious steadfastness", while Lee was more interested in mixing Islam with "social activism" and secular engagement. In the aftermath of the War on Terror, Lee was investigated by the FBI accused of "connections to terrorists", however he was cleared of all charges put against him. By 2010, Lee completed his drift away from Salafism and began to associate himself religiously with the Sufism of Mubarak Ali Gilani, the community in which his then wife was reared, before concluding they exhibited the same type of religious-extremism and isolationist tendencies Lee had found with the Salafi community. By 2013, Lee announced in a YouTube video in which he denounced Islam and Islamic societies completely that he was leaving the religion and converting to Baptism, a Protestant sect, before changing back again to Islam a few days later. In 2017 Lee criticized the Georgetown Islamic Studies Professor Jonathan Brown after he attended his lecture on slavery.
Political activity
Lee, while working as a cab driver, campaigned against the introduction of ride-share companies to the St. Louis Market. In 2014, Lee covered the Ferguson Unrest and was interviewed on several national outlets. During his coverage of the Ferguson unrest, Lee was arrested on two occasions Lee was subsequently fired as a cab driver and contended that it was for his political activities in Ferguson. In 2016 Lee briefly announced he was running for St. Louis Mayor as a Republican on a far-left platform before endorsing St. Louis treasurer and Democrat Tishaura Jones for the office. Lee also writes Noir Literature that is based in St Louis. Since June 2018, Lee hosted St Louis Speaks, a podcast that fosters dialog about St Louis and the surrounding area. The podcast was co-created and is produced by historian Mark Loehrer In 2020 the podcast changed its name to Informal History STL and added several local historians and writers while adding a quarterly print publication.
