Skipper

Today's report on the incitement of terrorism case stimulated a thought that a fair number of these fundamentalist firebrands are converts. My pictures show Germaine Lindsay, one of the 7-7 bombers, Richard Reid, the 'Shoe Bomber' as well as Abu Izzadeen, the Muslim cleric sentenced yesterday to four and a half years for 'inciting and funding' terrorism.

Why should 'converts' provide such a substantial slice of this irregular army of young malcontents who want to do such awful things to the 'kuffar' as they call us non Muslims? Of course I don't know, but from the depths of my ignorance, I can hazard a theory. All three of the above believe non Muslims are infidels whose lives are worthless; as Izzadeeen preached to one audience:

"He who joins the British Army, the American Army, he is a mortal kaffir and his only hukum (punishment) is for his head to be removed. Indeed, whoever changes his deen (Muslim code of life); kill him."

Abu wss once Trevor Brooks, born to a Jamaican family and trained as an electrician. He is thought to have been radicalized by Omarf Bakri and Abu Hamza in the nineties, experiences which he followed up by terrorist training in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Already married to an Arabic wife, he advertised on an Islamic matrimonial website for three more wives so that he could increase his children from three to nine. Anyone who has seen his heckling of John Reid some time back or heard his interview with John Humphrys, will have doubtless spotted a permanently hyped up hysterical kind of guy.

Germaine Lindsay, also from a Jamaican family, had a troubled early life along with rumours of drug dealing before he completely abandoned his circle of friends and became a devout Muslim, changing his name to Abdullah Shaheed Jamal. Richard Reid was also linked to Jamaica in that his father from that island, spent much of his life in prison. Reid was involved in street crime and converted to Islam when in Feltham Young Offender's Institution.

It seemed to me as I read about Izzadeen that Islam seems to offfer a convenient and spiritually comfortable refuge together with a cause for disturbed young people who are already at war with our society. From feeling alone and outcast, with little to lose, conversion enables them to belong to a new and welcoming group which offers answers for every question. Once converted they become, like so many such, 'more royalist than the king' and push themselves to the front of the cause, volunteering for the most dangerous and eye-catching missions. Even without conversions I suspect these three would have posed problems; once converted they were able to feel valued by comrades and justified in their anger against a society in which they had not prospered.