I’ve encountered many people who have changed religions in my lifetime. I’ve seen people choose to become Buddhists, Christians, Jews, neo-Pagans or Hindus. Although some of them may have, as can often be the case, taken their new faith more seriously than those born into these paths, most of these individuals, with one or two exceptions, have basically been sane. I’ve not seen any of them go out an commit acts of terror but that is not the case with those who convert to the ideology of Islam.

It seems a remarkably well-worn path for individuals, whether they are approaching their conversion to Islam in a clear eyed sane manner or whether they have underlying mental problems, to convert to Islam and then commit acts of violence. Many people may wonder why this is the case as rarely do we see new Buddhists or new Christians or new Jews choose a path of violence and terror. Could it be that the content of Islam is much more violent than these other paths? A brief examination of Islamic texts shows that there is a shedload of encouragement to engage in violence. Although there are stories involving violence in the Jewish Torah and some texts in the Christian bible have been interpreted to give permission for violence in the past, these texts do not encourage or call for violence in the here and now. Islamic texts on the other hand do call for violence in the contemporary context.

Islam also accepts violent or potentially violent people as converts and unlike Christianity and Judaism, doesn’t seem to do much to weed such people out. In both Christianity and Judaism there are extended (in Christianity it’s shorter but in Judaism at least two years) periods of learning before you can be accepted as a trusted convert. These instruction periods ensure that a) the religious grouping is not taking on someone who will be unsuitable for membership and b) so that the potential convert knows what they are getting into. In Islam all that is required is for a person to repeat a short passage of text, the Shahada, and your in. A person can join Islam and know bugger all about it and this, along with the large amounts of contemporaneous exhortations to violence contained in Islamic scriptures creates a significant problem.

The latest story of a man who chooses Islam and then chooses to commit acts of violence comes from Toronto in Canada. The man, Michael Storms aged 35 has been arrested following a hostage taking incident at a massage parlour in Toronto’s Eglington West district. Storms, who denied any terrorist motivation for the hostage taking, had converted to Islam when he was 20 and appears to be suffering from some form of mental distress. Storms had alleged that he was upset about being put under surveillance by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and that he wanted the monitoring to stop. He telephoned the Toronto Star with his whines about being monitored during the hostage taking incident and said that he ‘needed to be listened to’.

However, the Toronto Star newspaper states that Storm may not be the sort of ‘clean hands’ Muslim that he believes himself to be. In an article published by the National Review in 2014 and quoted by the Star, Michael Storms was considered by the Canadian authorities to be a ‘high risk’ traveller who may become involved in overseas Islamic terrorism.

The Star said of the 2014 classification of Storms as a ‘high risk’ traveller:

The man on the phone had told the Star he had converted to Islam when he was 20, and also went by the name Muhammed Islam. The caller said his motivations for the kidnapping were related to years of being surveilled and monitored by the RCMP, and that he was desperate for it to stop.

The RCMP did not return a request for comment to the Star by press time.

In a 2014 article in the National Post, a Toronto man identified as Muhammed Islam was named as one of approximately 90 high-risk travellers whose passports were seized to prevent them from travelling to take part in extremist violence abroad.

In a YouTube video posted in 2014, a man called Michael Storms identifies himself as Muhammed Islam and says he had a difficult childhood, grew up with family that were “very bad people” — “that was a my upbringing, crime and violence, drugs.”

“I was never alone, but I felt lonely,” he says in the video.

Throughout Wednesday’s incident, the man on the phone stressed that his actions were not motivated by terrorism and he staunchly did not support it.

Although this particular incident at the massage parlour may not be directly related to Islamic terrorism, he was certainly extreme enough in the past to warrant being included on a high risk traveller list. If nothing else this case shows that Muslim Dawa merchants are really none too picky about who they sweep up. In other faiths, such as Judaism and Christianity, people with such obvious mental and social problems as Storms may have been gently weeded out during the instructional phase, not so with Islam. Islam will take people whether they understand what they are getting into or not and they will take people whether or not they are a violent or potentially violent fraggle.

Here we have yet another violent, damaged individual who may well have been attracted to Islam because it appeared to give him the sort of home and companionship that he missed out on earlier in life. Unfortunately in this, as in many other similar cases, such as the Islamic convert who murdered an elderly woman in Enfield North London a few years back, we have unstable people joining an ideology called Islam with tragic consequences. Joining Islam doesn’t give the mentally ill any sort of peace, it doesn’t help them put their lives back together, but often just makes them worse.

Maybe it’s time for the medical and psychiatric authorities to consider whether to classify joining Islam as an aggravating factor for a mentally ill person? Just as the use of drink and street drugs are considered as things that do not help mentally ill people get better but instead make them more likely to have catastrophic episodes. Converting to Islam, especially by the insane, should be seen as a warning sign that the patient may at some point ‘go rogue’ in a violently Islamic manner.

In this case the situation was resolved without bloodshed and the assailant Storms has been charged with forcible confinement and uttering threats, but it could easily have been otherwise. We need to ask ourselves how many other lonely mentally ill people are being trapped by Dawa merchants into signing up for Islam and also how much of a threat to all of us these individuals could be in the future? Islam is different and needs to be treated differently from other religious or quasi-religious paths. If we continue to treat Islam as no different from other spiritual paths then we will continue to be surprised when those who choose Islam turn lethal.