A young Englishman named Jason Savage was looking for something in his life, and so he converted to Islam in 2012. That’s not surprising in today’s Britain, where the far-left Church of England teaches only shadows and vestiges of Christianity, and Islam is essentially the only alternative to the materialistic secularism that has led so many to find life empty and pointless. In a very real sense, however, Savage’s conversion to Islam is when his troubles began. Now he is facing life in prison, although in the UK that is likely to mean that he will spend only sixteen years behind bars. Savage’s story is similar to that of a great many converts to Islam who become jihadis, but this time there’s a twist.
The UK’s Press Association reported Friday that Savage was “found guilty in January of plotting to stab an Islamic cleric who was an outspoken critic of terrorism, after jurors were shown footage of him filming a reconnaissance ‘mission’ near a mosque and Islamic bookstore.” On Friday, he went to prison “after a judge said messages he had sent showed that he believed he would die while committing a terrorist attack.”
And so here we have yet another convert to Islam who somehow got the crazy idea that his new, peaceful religion commanded him to commit violence against those outside the fold. Unlike other convert jihadis, however, Savage didn’t primarily target non-Muslims; instead, he decided to murder an imam whose view of Islam differed from his own, specifically on the question of the permissibility of Islamic jihad terrorism: “video footage released by West Midlands Police after Savage was convicted showed him filming reconnaissance near a mosque in Wright Street, Small Heath, Birmingham, in March last year.”
Savage is caught on the video talking about how he would escape the area after committing his act of jihad. He says: “That seems like the best way to get away – the police will probably come from that way.” The Press Association adds that along with “charting different routes into the mosque, Savage, who had adapted the handle of a knife found at his home, was heard to say: ‘Just needs the means now. Ask Allah to give man the means, bro.’”
Savage was planning to attack a Muslim cleric, as well as a “bookstore and mosque in the Small Heath area,” because the targeted imam’s “approach to the Salafi movement was ‘entirely at odds’ with his own.” The unnamed imam, as well as his mosque, publishing house, and retail store, “advocated a strand of Salafism that stresses the importance of non-involvement in social or political activism.” The imam whom Savage wanted to send to Allah was “an ‘outspoken critic’ of Islamist terrorism, arguing that it was entirely incompatible with the true essence of Islam.”
Why don’t we see more genuine Islamic reformers? The answer lies in Jason Savage’s choice of targets. There are smooth deceivers by the bucketload, but genuine reformers are exceedingly thin on the ground. One reason is that even to assert that Islam needs reforming after Allah has “perfected” it (Qur’an 5:3) makes one a heretic or apostate, and thus deserving of the death penalty. As it is fundamental to the Islamic religion to “strike terror in the enemies of Allah” (Qur’an 8:60), many jihadis would regard an imam who spoke out against terrorism as a heretic or apostate. And so Jason Savage decided to murder an imam of his acquaintance who did just that.
Savage also intended to carry out the Qur’an’s command to “kill the polytheists wherever you find them” (9:5), with polytheists being pretty much anyone who isn’t a Muslim. He “had taken screenshots of the West Midlands Police headquarters, police stations in Perry Barr and Stechford and various military locations in Birmingham, and told the undercover officer he was putting his neck on a ‘chopping block.’” Nevertheless, he was clearly willing to take the risk.
In prison, Savage has shown himself to be a deeply committed jihad terrorist: “prosecutor Peter Ratliff said Savage had in the past set fire to furniture in his cell and posted social media messages saying he was delighted to hear prison staff had been ‘stabbed up’ after what he claimed was a plot against Muslim inmates.” But don’t be concerned: he’s really the victim. Savage, it seems, “has also been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder following childhood trauma, the court was told.” Oh, well, then! Set him free at once!
Related: Islamization: Another ‘Conspiracy Theory’ Turns Out to Have Been True All Along
Seriously, though, what is it about converts to Islam? To write the stories of all the converts to Islam who have turned to terrorism would make for a good-sized book, and yet it remains an iron dogma of American public discourse that Islam is a religion of peace that has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. Every religion has its extremists, we’re told again and again, and yet there are literally hundreds and possibly many more converts to Islam who have joined terror groups, while there are vanishingly few, if any, converts to Christianity or other religions who have done so.
Authorities remain resolutely indifferent to this phenomenon, and 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 apparently be “Islamophobic.” Yet this only ensures that ever more new Muslims will find their way into terrorism, as Jason Savage can attest.
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