User:Geo Swan/working/Religious conversion and terrorism (fixed)

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Religious converts have been thought to have a special zeal, that frequanlty exceeds those born in that faith. A number of well known cases in recent past have involved terrorsts who are converts. For example, Rajah Solaiman Revolutionary Movement (RSRM) is a movement of converts to Islam in Philippines that seek to establsh a theocratic Islamic state across the Philippines A study by the Washington-based Nixon Center that examined the backgrounds of 373 terrorists in Europe and the U.S. found 35 of them (9%) were converts to Islam

Convert terrorists and Police
Simon Montlake, a Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor writes :

The Asia Times reports

Notable converts who are alleged to have moved on to terrorism
Some of the prominent converts include:


 * Follower of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.
 * Israeli Prime Minister called him a "terrorist".
 * Walid Shoebat || || || former terrorist
 * Ahmad Santos || || ||
 * Converted to Islam while working in Saudi Arabia.
 * Alleged bomb-maker.
 * The founder of the Rajah Solaiman Movement.
 * Derrick Shareef || || ||
 * Willie Brigitte || || ||
 * Germaine Lindsay || || ||
 * James Charles Kopp || right to life || Assassination ||
 * Shot and killed Barnett Slepian, a doctor who performed abortions.
 * Michael F. Griffin || right to life || Assassination ||
 * Shot and killed David Gunn, a doctor who performed abortions.
 * Allegedly yelled "You won't kill any more babies!" when he made his shot.
 * }
 * James Charles Kopp || right to life || Assassination ||
 * Shot and killed Barnett Slepian, a doctor who performed abortions.
 * Michael F. Griffin || right to life || Assassination ||
 * Shot and killed David Gunn, a doctor who performed abortions.
 * Allegedly yelled "You won't kill any more babies!" when he made his shot.
 * }
 * }

Olivier Roy, a Paris-based authority on Islamic radicalism, believes that the common factor among violent Islamists — converts and non-converts — is that all are "born again." He writes:


 * "They broke with the religion of their parents to fervently embrace a new one, or a more fundamentalist stream of Islam, such as Saudi Arabian-based Wahhabism. He describes converts turning to jihad as following the well-established path of European rebels embracing an extremist cause.


 * "The people going to Al Qaeda today, a good part of them would have gone to the extreme left 30 years ago," said Roy, research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research.

Harvard sociologist Marc Sageman, author of "Understanding Terror Networks", disagrees


 * "If you look at the history of converts, they usually converted because their friends became Muslims, and when the group radicalized they radicalized along with the group," said Sageman, who studied the profile of 172 known terrorists.

In NE India, terrorism has been linked to religious conversion. .