I’ve become sadly used to people who convert to Islam and then become involved in terrorism shortly afterwards. It says a lot about the nature of Islam as an ideology to have so many of its new adherents become enamoured of violence so shortly after saying the Shahada. It’s almost as if Islam isn’t really a ‘religion of peace’ at all.
The case of Sean Andrew Duncan of the US State of Virginia is another prime example of someone embracing Islam and then going ‘full jihad’ pretty quickly. According to NBC News (h/t ROP), Sean Duncan was arrested by officers of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in late December 2017 for tampering with evidence in order to impede an investigation. Duncan was being investigated by the FBI after suspicions were raised that he was becoming radicalised after converting to Islam and was engaging in support for ISIS. Duncan is alleged to have destroyed a USB thumb drive and a memory chip in order to evade investigators.
NBC News said:
A Virginia man was arrested Friday on suspicion of trying to destroy evidence as authorities investigated him for allegedly supporting the Islamic State terror group and expressing an interest in carrying out an attack in the United States.
Court documents say Sean Andrew Duncan, a U.S. citizen, faces a charge of altering or destroying a thumb drive and memory chip to impede a federal investigation.
Investigators said in an affidavit that one of Duncan’s relatives reported that he converted to Islam and may have been radicalized, and that a person in custody in another country for trying to join Islamic State said Duncan was one of her U.S.-based “contacts” who expressed an interest in joining the group and carrying out an attack and provided information about homemade bombs.
Duncan is not charged with any terrorism offenses, according to court documents. The FBI said in the affidavit that the search warrant was part of an investigation into attempts to provide material support for a terror organization. A phone number for his home could not be immediately located, and it is unclear if he has an attorney.
He was arrested Friday after agents executed a search warrant at his home in Sterling, Virginia, and after Duncan allegedly ran out of the back of the home and threw a plastic bag with broken parts of a broken parts of a thumb drive immersed in some liquid, according to court documents.
It seems that this particular convert to Islam may have tried before to go ‘full Islam’ and engage in terrorism. The NBC News piece added that Duncan along with his wife had tried to enter Turkey in 2016 but were turned back to the USA by Turkish authorities. I suspect that the reason for his trip to Turkey may well have been in order to join the ISIS fighters across the border in Syria.
Like so many others who have converted to Islam Duncan seems to have readily and willingly imbibed the hatefulness of Islamic theology. As with similar violent Islamic converts, Duncan reached for and grasped the poison fruit of Islam and drank its foetid juices greedily. It has to be said that this sort of behaviour is nearly always found in those who have decided to embrace Islam. We do not see converts to other rule based religions such as Judaism suddenly want to embrace a bronze age lifestyle and stone adulterers or go apeshit at someone eating a cheeseburger or wanting to keep slaves mainly because Judaism now sees stoning adulterers, keeping slaves and hassling some random for eating a cheeseburger as wrong. However the new followers of Islam want to keep slaves, imprison women in mobile canvas prisons and engage in acts of violence against non Muslims. The violence and the encouragement and sanction of violence in Islamic scripture and culture differentiate Islam from other much more peaceful faiths. The only similarity between Islam and Judaism to my view is the avoidance of bacon. Neither Judaism nor any of the precepts of the faiths that sprung from Judaism such as Christianity has anything like the cultural permission and approval of violence, both intra faith and interfaith violence, as that professed by Islam. Islam is dangerous and those who convert to this ideology should be treated with at best suspicion and even if necessary with hostility. Their choice of this Islamic path brings no good to anyone or anything around them and may even bring violence and death to the innocent.
There is something about Islam something found in no other faith that makes so many of its new adherents behave in the way that they do. Unlike other faiths, there is express exhortation within Islamic scripture and within Islamic culture for contemporaneous violence against and hostility towards non Muslims. Both we and our governments should recognise that Islam is not like other faiths. Islam is often not merely a private belief, something that Queen Elizabeth I said that she did not want to interfere with, but is instead an ideology regularly grasped by the violently inclined individual because it gives them permission to commit violence and spiritual reward for murder.
It’s yet another day and yet another convert to Islam arrested for terrorism offences. Doesn’t the term ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ become more laughably dishonest by the day?
