At City of Brass, Aziz Poonawalla writes about his worry that “the high rate of conversion to Islam by violent criminals in prison is going to lead to an increase in the share of criminal acts by muslims [sic] by definition.”
He discusses this in light of the recent murder of Pvt. William Long in an attack on a Little Rock military recruiting center, allegedly committed by Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, formerly know as Carlos Bledsoe:
Details about Bledsoe/Muhammad’s motives and background have yet to emerge, but I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that he is an ex-convict, converted to Islam in prison, and judging by the ordinance in his pickup truck probably has some criminal gang history. This is the point I need to underscore—the muslim [sic] community needs to think about not just terrorists and fire-breathing jihadi imams, but also about more prosaic things like violence and criminal activity. The black community has struggled with the burden of violence by young black males for decades, and as long as race and economic class continue to be intertwined in the inner city as they are, the burden will not be easily lifted. But the non-black muslim [sic] community needs to be involved here as well—it’s not just a “black problem” anymore, it’s also something that affects even affluent desis in suburbia. The gulf between the black muslim [sic] and the non-black-muslim [sic] communities here only exists in our minds; the public draws no distinction and sees only headlines, “man named Muhammad kills a soldier” and you can expect the usual suspects to run with that ball accordingly.
Read the full post here, and see a previous here & there discussion of prison conversion to Islam here.