Here's something interesting, from Kings of War; statistical analysis shows that there is no correlation between arrests on terrorism charges and the concentration of Muslims in the population. It's almost as if...a gratifyingly small percentage of people are completely fucking stupid and pig-ignorant, that this is normally distributed in the population, and it’s essentially a matter of chance what pig-ignorant fucking stupidity they get up to You know - like the BNP.
Actually, I can think of one less snarky explanation that fits the facts. This would be that converts are disproportionately likely to either a) become jihadis or b) fall under police suspicion. Assuming that the relative salience of Muslim converts in the general population is likely to be higher where there aren't many real Muslims, that would explain this effect. Like the guy in Exeter. It would also fit my original Bloody Idiot hypothesis; angry, not too bright and not too stable, and pretty ignorant, suddenly finding a kit of new obsessions to channel their unfocused rage.
Just like...the BNP.
Meanwhile, Johann Hari has a good piece in the Indy in which he interviews a lot of ex-jihadis. He clearly got a serve from the Quilliam Foundation, the Institute for Studies, and probably the Cats' Protection League in doing this one, but it's well worth reading - especially the bits about Amnesty International.
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