Monday, June 01, 2009

And This, Too, Is Terrorism

An Arkansas man has been arrested for firing shots into an Army recruiting center, killing one soldier and wounding another. Though the investigation is ongoing, it appears that the shooter was a Muslim convert with "political and religious motives".
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5 comments:

PG said...

Do you know what percentage of the American Muslim population is made up of converts? And within that, the group that converted in prison? I don't want to generalize, but they seem to be the ones who are recruited to "Islamic" terrorism more than Muslims who immigrated to become permanent residents, or who were born here. I'm thinking of the Beltway snipers, Jose Padilla, the 4 doofuses accused of a plot to bomb Bronx synagogues. Obviously the overwhelming majority even of prison converts will have no inclination to terrorism (including those who have good reason to be pissed off and instead are working to make our country better), but it might shed some light on the extent to which our prisons, even without Gitmo detainees residing there, have fostered terrorist ideology.

7:37 PM
Rebecca said...

The convert's always going to be more enthusiastic about religion than the average born-into-it person - obviously, since they chose it - but I agree, PG, about wondering how much prison specifically influences these converts to commit acts of terror.

8:31 PM
chingona said...

I believe a lot of the really nasty Salafist types who went into Iraq were, well, not converts, but not especially religious criminals who were proselytized in prisons in their home countries. I think there's a certain amount of people who are simply thugs finding a justification for their thuggery in fundamentalist religion, as well as people who have underlying issues that make them easily swayed being targeted for recruitment.

8:47 PM
PG said...

chingona,

It does seem intuitive that someone who's already a criminal would, with the influence of fundamentalist religion, just turn his crime in that direction, but most of what I've heard about conversion to Islam in prison is that it superficially seems to help the convert become more serious and respectable for a while.

6:35 AM
chingona said...

I wasn't trying to bash Islam or even proselytizing in prison. Presumably, the vast majority of the people doing that type of work with people in prison are well intentioned and peaceful, and I have no doubt that some convicts benefit from getting religion (of whatever stripe).

But I do think there is some relationship between prisons and recruiting people for violent expression of fundamentalism.

7:52 AM

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