Author: Daniel Pipes
Publication: New York Sun
Date: December 6, 2005
URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3184
Converts to Islam are taking over the terrorist
operations previously carried out mainly by Muslim-born immigrants and their
children.
This was dramatically illustrated when a Belgian
convert to Islam, Muriel Degauque, 38, blew herself up near Baghdad on November
9 in a suicide attack on American troops, becoming the first Christian-born
Western woman to kill herself for Islamist purposes. And of the fourteen people
arrested because of connections to Degauque, half were converts to Islam.
In neighboring Holland, a just published government report specifically worries
about radicalized converts.
Islamist terror organizations particularly
prize converts. They know the local culture and blend in. They cannot be deported.
They can hide their religious affiliation by avoiding mosques, lying low,
even drinking alcohol and taking drugs to maintain their cover. One guide
counsels would-be suicide bombers going to Iraq to "wear jeans, eat doughnuts,
and always carry your Walkman."
Converts who either carried out a terrorist
operation or were jailed come from many Western countries. Here is a partial
listing. (Converts as yet only suspected, arrested, or indicted will be listed
in a separate article at my Web site, www.DanielPipes.org.)
* Australia: British-born Jack Roche, nine
years in jail for trying to bomb the Israeli embassy in Canberra.
* France: David Courtailler, four years for
abetting terrorists. Pierre Richard Robert, life for planning terrorist attacks
in Morocco. Ruddy Teranova, three years for physically attacking a moderate
Muslim.
* Germany: Steven Smyrek, seven years for
planning a suicide mission for Hezbollah.
* Italy: Domenico Quaranta, twenty years for
setting fire to a Milan subway station and trying to attack ancient Greek
temples in Agrigento, Sicily.
* Netherlands: Jason Walters, the son of a
black American father and a Dutch woman, belonged to the Hofstad Network and
threw a hand grenade at police; his trial begins this week.
* United Kingdom: Germaine Lindsay, an immigrant
from Jamaica, one of the London transport suicide bombers of July 2005, killing
26. Richard Reid, life for the "shoe bomber" who tried to bring
down a Paris-to-Miami flight. Andrew Rowe, fifteen years for planning terrorist
attacks.
* United States: Ryan Anderson, life for trying
to aid Al Qaeda while serving as a National Guardsman. David Belfield, assassinated
a former Iranian diplomat outside Washington and fled to Iran. Clement Rodney
Hampton-el, 35 years for helping bomb the World Trade Center in 1993. Mark
Fidel Kools, death sentence for "fragging" and killing two of his
army officers. John Muhammad, death sentence for his role as the lead "Beltway
Sniper." Randall Royer, twenty years for weapons and explosives charges
"stemming from the investigation into a militant jihadist network in
Northern Virginia." Five members of Jamaat ul Fuqra, a Pakistan-based
group suspected of at least thirteen murders in America, jailed for up to
69 years.
Lorenzo Vidino reports in Al Qaeda in Europe
(Prometheus) that the authorities find that "dozens of European converts
have joined terrorist groups." Nor is the problem restricted to Western
converts to Islam.
* In the Philippines, for example, one convert
confessed to bombing a ferry in February 2004, killing over 100, and others
are linked to an attempt to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Manila. More generally,
the government charges that Al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah use the Rajah Solaiman
Movement, a group of converts, to carry out terror attacks.
* Non-Western converts move to the West and
engage in terrorism there. Consider three American cases: Rashid Baz, born
a Lebanese Druze, 141 years for murdering a Jewish boy on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Wadih el-Hage, born a Lebanese Catholic, life without parole for his work
with Osama bin Laden. John Samuel, born an Ethiopian Christian, awaits trial
at Guantánamo, accused of entering the United States to terrorize for
Al Qaeda.
The growing prominence of converts to terrorism
means that such counterterrorism tools as looking for Muslim names or excluding
potential terrorists at the border do not suffice. Instead, it is now also
critical to know exactly who converts to Islam and to watch converts to see
which of them are radicalized.
Even without becoming Muslims, some of the
persons named above could have engaged in terrorism. But security in the West,
the Philippines, and elsewhere requires coming to terms with a very awkward
fact: Conversion to Islam substantially increases the probability of a person's
involvement in terrorism.
