The woman who has just been revealed to have been plotting to blow up the New York state Capitol building is named Jessica Bowie, a 35-year-old woman from Albany. Jessica Bowie is a convert to Islam who was determined to strike out at those whom she considered to be “enemies of Allah,” and so once again the question must be raised: What is it with converts to Islam? Why do so very many of them get involved in violence and terrorism?
Nowadays, as the debate on Sharia in the U.S. heats up, we are hearing again and again from the media establishment that Islam is peaceful, tolerant, and benign. So why do so many people who embrace it want to kill?
In his story about the plot, PJ’s Stephen Green quoted Nick Sortor asking: "What the hell is going on with women right now?" It’s a pertinent question in light of the Lindsay Clancy case and others, but regarding Jessica Bowie, the answer seems quite clear. Clancy took her conversion to Islam so seriously that she began to wear not just a hijab, the garment that covers a woman’s hair in order to discourage male temptation, but a niqab, which covers everything except the eyes and is a sign of total adherence to Sharia.
Bowie was captured on surveillance video wearing that niqab while taking her own surveillance shots of the Capitol building in Albany, which she hoped to destroy, as well as in Home Depot, where she was buying supplies that she intended to use in her mass murder plot. NBC News reported Thursday that Bowie “allegedly told a confidential source that she supported ISIS and asked for help learning to make explosives.”
Her support for the Islamic State was clear from “multiple audio recordings in English and Arabic,” and Bowie also once wrote: “Praise be to Allah for September 11.” NBC adds that she “converted to Islam five years ago, was radicalized online and created several social media accounts using an honorific Islamic name. She appeared to have created multiple accounts because they were ‘frequently suspended by providers for violating their terms of use.’”
She was plotting to attack the New York Capitol because she wanted to “harm the enemies of god,” an echo of the Qur’an, which exhorts Muslims to “strike terror in the enemies of Allah” (8:60). Craig Tremaroli, the FBI special agent in charge of the agency’s Albany field office, said that Bowie had even bigger aspirations: “Miss Bowie didn’t just want to kill lawmakers; she wanted a complete disruption of our government. And after that, she planned to flee the country and one day come back to ‘do more,’ such as New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Even stating she would come back to attack the White House and the president.” Well, for that last one, she’d have to get in line.
Yet despite the fact that this is an all too common story, hardly anyone ever asks the key question: What is it about converts to Islam? This woman, and many others like her, converted to Islam and instead of becoming a peaceful adherent of the vaunted religion of peace, became a jihad terrorist. Why did she do that? Why didn’t the local imam and her new friends at whatever mosque in Albany she attended prevent her from misunderstanding her new, supposedly peaceful faith? Why do so many converts to Islam become terrorists, while so few converts to Christianity do so, if any become terrorists at all?
Related: Progress: Jihad Finally Comes to Hong Kong
This has gone on for years, but authorities remain resolutely indifferent to it. Not a single law enforcement or intelligence agency anywhere in the world is studying why so many converts to Islam end up in terror groups. To look into this and try to devise ways to prevent it would, once again, apparently be “Islamophobic.”
Yet this only ensures that ever more new Muslims will find their way into terrorism, as the sad story of Jessica Bowie yet again attests. Can I guarantee that you’ll never see another article from me in which I ask the questions that I ask above? I wish I could guarantee that. But this is virtually certain to happen again. The denial and willful ignorance remain near-total. The convert terrorists will keep coming.
