| An alarming feature of our current sociocultural world is the striking frequency of conversions to Islam across the entire gamut of Western private and public life: prisoners converting to the religion of peace in record numbers; women who crave the emotional comfort and feeling of security that donning the hijab or the niqab purportedly confers; disaffected youth who find purpose and meaning in attending the mosque, often becoming radicalized in the process; African-Americans reacting against Christianity as the white man’s religion and who “associate conversion to Islam with recovering their ethnic heritage”; political figures who, whether secretly or publicly, swear by the Koran, the most conspicuous recent example being the bizarre spectacle of Arnoud Van Doorn, one of the Dutch producers of the uncompromising anti-Islam film Fitna and a former leading member of Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party, happily and gratefully converting to Islam. Even a Gitmo prison guard proved unable to resist the seduction of Islam. To read only a partial list of notable converts to Islam is chastening. |