The Convert's Zeal By Daniel Benjamin

One might have thought that terrorist organizations would be leery of converts and worry that they were unreliable or even suspect them to be moles. The opposite has been true. According to French sociologist Olivier Roy, 10 percent of al-Qaida's soldiers in the global jihad are converts, and in France the number might reach 25 percent. Roy takes this as an indicator of the group's globalized nature, "because a convert is not motivated by his or her culture at all. He is not motivated by the political life of his or her country. He's motivated by joining something global. Al-Qaida is made of born again [Muslims] and converts who join the global jihad. One day they go to Bosnia and another to Chechnya, or to Kashmir, or to Afghanistan, or to Fallujah."

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