Just this week I saw a group at the beach, all wearing their yards and yards of cloth, of course. Most of them appeared to be Pakistani (there are a couple of Pakistani-owned convenience stores around here, and the man with them certainly looked Paki), but there were two sad-looking, overweight white girls floundering around in their way excessive amounts of cloth. Their faces looked like the Anglo-American country-type face you see around here a lot.
Some of these girls, who are mostly lower income, get into Islam because they hook up with black men who have become Muslims in prison, but others are basically just the sort of lost soul who is the classic cult victim. They're looking for somebody to control every aspect of their lives and tell them what to do, and Islam is certainly willing to do that. I think if one sees Islam as a cult, complete with mind-control and isolation from mainstream society, rather than a religion, it is much easier to understand it and its appeal to certain types of people. No different from Jim Jones or the Heaven's Gate cults, although a good deal more vicious.