A decade ago, there were 300 converts to Islam annually in Germany. Last year, there were an estimated 4,000 conversions in Germany. And this is a problem:
While religious leaders emphasize that most converts are law-abiding citizens who often promote interfaith understanding, the recent arrests in Germany prompted some lawmakers to suggest that police should keep converts under surveillance."Of course not all converts are problematic, but some are particularly dangerous because they want to demonstrate through extreme fanaticism that they are particularly good Muslims," Guenther Beckstein, interior minister for the state of Bavaria, said last week....
But counterterrorist analysts and officials said they have become much more common and are now playing leadership roles. They said there is also evidence that militant groups, which used to eye converts suspiciously as potential infiltrators, are now encouraging them to join.
Why would young Europeans flock to Islam? Sociologically, I mean -- what is the reason? My guess is that it has to do with a couple of things. One, materialism cannot satisfy the longings of the soul. People are not animals. We have souls. Man is naturally religious. Secularist atheism cannot sustain most people. Secondly, European Christianity is so milquetoast, in the main. That's one thing Islam definitely is not. For better or for worse, Muslims have great religious confidence. And that sort of thing is attractive.
This is yet another reason why the United States has got to start paying a lot more critical attention to the Muslim Brotherhood's activities here. Read the comprehensive strategy memo seized by FBI agents (scroll down for the English translation). The Brotherhood clearly intends to establish control over how Islam is taught in this country, by either founding or gaining effective control over Muslim organizations, and making community Islamic centers their base in local communities. If, as some outspoken anti-Islamist Muslims have charged, Islamists are taking over the institutions of Islamic life i America and turning it to the Muslim Brotherhood's goals, then it seems to me that there is a strong likelihood that converts to Islam will be educated in a militant, political, extremist Islam.
How can we possibly afford to be indifferent to that in a time of war with Islamic extremism?
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"In other words, revolutionary idealism inevitably led to nihilism, murder and suicide."
Would you say that the revolutionary idealism of Patrick Henry, BEn Franklin, et al, inevitably led to Blackwater?
I guess I should qualify what I was saying, Will. Revolutionary idealism in pursuit of a utopian goal has a way of curdling into something much worse than the disease it was attempting to cure. Especially when it proposes a total cure for the ills of liberal society.
I would say that the Founding Fathers of the U.S. were much more pragmatic. "Let us all hang together so that we do not hang separately."
"Getting back to the Germans converting to Islam, do we have any breakdown of the stats by sex? How many of these converts relative to the whole are self supporting adult women who are not choosing Islam just to please a man friend? True conversions."
Ingrid Mattson, a convert to Islam from Catholicism and an Islamic law scholar at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, was recently elected to lead the Islamic Society of North America.
Mr Dreher, you pinned it in your first comments. When the faith you are raised in is merely nominal, you have no firm attachment to it. Along comes a living breathing faith. One might say, ANY living breathing faith. Your spiritual thirst makes itself known, and you may well follow it to conversion. For Islam is a living breathing faith. Like its precedents Judaism and Christianity, it is concerned with justice and with achieving spiritual growth. There is beauty in its daily practices, in its intellectual traditions, the sung/chanted prayers, the scripture, the religious calendar year. There is community among its adherants. Indeed if you know any actual Muslims, it is its adherants which make it most attractive, above and beyond the religious practice itself.
I first came into contact with Islam at language school in the Army as a 21-year-old. I was deeply affected by the faith as it is lived by ordinary men and women, and by what I saw of its practice among them. I was born with a longing for God. If I had not been raised and educated by such strong Christians who observed a living faith, this might have been my first contact with one. And I might have "converted," if you can call it that when the convert comes from only a nominal faith identity. A few of my fellow trainees did, and they are probably the strongest linguists and cultural liasions we have. I am not surprised that the faith is catching like wildfire in some areas of Europe.
One could only wish ours held a similar attraction for the youth of the continent.
I am quoting this from your article "Of course not all converts are problematic, but some are particularly dangerous because they want to demonstrate through extreme fanaticism that they are particularly good Muslims," Guenther Beckstein, interior minister for the state of Bavaria, said last week...."
I just want to correct your statement, being a good Muslim does not mean you should be extremly fanatic.. There are millions of Muslims who denounce extremists.. and this is the teaching of Islam..
Regards,
Mohamed Hashim
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