Muslim Converts in Britain Seen as Among Most Extreme (interesting perspective)

LATimes.com ^ | 8/22/2006 | Kim Murphy

[Dark Skies]

"The converts are seen as the most extreme, and they're seen as the most extreme even by other Muslims who may not come from the U.K. Which is really worrying," said Anthony Glees, director of the Brunel University Center for Intelligence and Security Studies in West London.

The growing number of homegrown converts in the ranks of militant Islam in Britain is raising troubling new questions not only about what it means to be British, but whether new Muslims must choose between family and faith across what many see as a yawning divide between civilizations.

Britain now has perhaps 50,000 Muslim converts, ranging from fair-haired homemakers in Yorkshire who have adopted the hijab to former Catholic priests, Afro-Caribbean street gang members and upper-middle-class university students.

At meetings attended by many new converts, Glees said, "people are brainwashed with certain ideas. Such as, there was no Holocaust. Such as, the London [transport] bombers killed far fewer people than the number of Muslims killed over hundreds of years by the British. These things are said, and they become increasingly accepted by these people as their ideological currency."

"Of course, we have noticed this," said Abdurahman Anderson, who has worked extensively with new Muslims at South London's Brixton mosque. The congregation there, about 60% converts, has included Richard Reid, the British-born would-be "shoe bomber" who was himself a convert, and Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, now serving a life sentence in the U.S.

[Paul Ross]

One must ask what is the spirit with which these new converts to islam are filled. It certainly isn't Holy.

Bump. Agreed.

[USMMA_83]

I'm with you on that. The most frightening Christian, Moslem's, etc. are the converts. They are hell bent to prove that they are better Christians, Moslem's, etc. than those who converted them. They go to lengths to find faults in the "believers." They are very easy to radicalize.

[garbanzo]

This certainly challenges the idea that the spreading of whiskey-sexy-democracy in the Middle East is the best hope of combatting radical Islamism since those things are all readily available in the UK, and most of Europe for that matter.