We have seen over recent years a worrying and dangerous phenomena, that of individuals who have chosen to convert to Islam turning very rapidly to religious extremism and terrorism. These converts to Islam seem to be going bad in this way to a much greater extent than converts to other faiths. I wrack my brains and I cannot think of any individual who has converted to Christianity, Judaism or Hinduism who has become a high profile religious terrorist. This sort of thing just doesn’t seem to happen to anything like the extent that it does with those who convert to Islam.
The question why those who convert to Islam become violent probably includes a number of factors. It’ is quite possible that Islamic Dawa (evangelism) practitioners deliberately target those who are mentally ill, violent or otherwise easy to manipulate. It is also likely that those whose personality has a tendency towards violence are attracted to Islam, an ideology that has a well deserved reputation for inciting and encouraging violence towards non Muslims. Whatever the reason for the phenomenon of Islamic converts rapidly turning to religious violence, there is little doubt in my mind that a significant minority of those who convert to Islam go bad very quickly. Because of that I believe that it should now be a priority for the security apparatus to pay more attention to those who convert to Islam.
The latest example of a person with mental issues who converts to Islam and plots terror comes from a court hearing in London. The hearing, held at London’s Central Criminal Court, was one to decide a suitable sentence for Lewis Ludlow, 27, formerly of Rochester, Kent, after he pleaded guilty to planning a terror attack on London’s Oxford Street shopping area and raising money for terrorism.
Ludlow carried out surveillance of various London landmarks including Oxford Street and wrote notes detailing how many people would be killed there in a potential vehicle attack. The court heard that Ludlow believed that a vehicle terror attack in Oxford Street would kill at least a hundred people.
This convert to Islam creature chose Islam at 16 and allegedly became an associate of the notorious Islamist Anjem Choudhury. However, although Ludlow broke with Choudhury later on, this break does not seem to have dampened his enthusiasm for Islamic religious violence at all and in time became enamoured of the terror group ISIS. The court was told that he had also sent money to an ISIS aligned group in the Philippines.
All in all Lewis Ludlow is a deeply unpleasant character. He’s a man enamoured of the idea of religious violence and one who refused to engage with Government counter extremism programmes. If he had not been stopped by police when he was, could have been part of a mass casualty Islamic terror attack that may have caused a bigger death toll than either the Manchester Arena or the 7/7 attacks.
Look at Lewis Ludlow’s face, look at the faces of all those who have converted to Islam and turned to terror very quickly and you will see the face of a fifth column that urgently needs to be countered by the British Government and a prime example of what can be called ‘the enemy within’. There are far more converts to Islam who turn to violence and hatred than among those who choose any other faith. It is for this reason that I believe that there needs to be much more attention paid by the security agencies to the issue of converts to Islam than may have been the case in the past. It was a convert to Islam remember that murdered Fusilier Rigby in Woolwich back in 2013 and it was a convert to Islam that was behind the awful Westminster Bridge attack of 2017.
Both Government and the British people need to be much more aware of the danger to us all that comes from converts to Islam. Whilst it is right and proper for Western societies to protect important rights such as the right to choose one’s religion and allow people to search for a spiritual path that best suits them, it is also right that all of us are protected from those who choose religious paths that are intimately linked with violence, terror and hatred. Converts to Islam are and will continue to be a security problem, it is now long past time that those with responsibility for our security recognised that much more than they have done previously. Those who convert to Islam should be considered as potentially dangerous as there is now more than enough evidence to show that this is the case.
