Until recently, the idea of white British converts to Islam carrying out
suicide bomb attacks in towns in England's quiet, rural southwest would have
been dismissed as fiction or fantasy. However, in the last two months two such
attempts appear to have failed.
In April, police raided a teenaged convert's flat in Bristol, finding two
suicide-bomb vests under construction. Just over a month later, in May, another
young convert was arrested after he unsuccessfully attempted to detonate three
bombs in a crowded restaurant in Exeter, Devon.
In the same month, a court in London found another white English convert
guilty of inciting terrorism. An examination of the three individuals
illustrates several important trends.
Andrew Ibrahim, a 19-year-old convert to Islam, was arrested by police on
April 16 in Bristol. The following day, police raided his flat in the city,
finding quantities of Hexamethylene Triperoxide Diamine (HMTD), a homemade
explosive, along with two homemade vests, ball bearings, air gun pellets, nails
and screws, wired circuitry, batteries and electric bulb filaments.
Local newspapers reported that Ibrahim, who was born to an English mother
and an Egyptian Coptic Christian father, had once been a shy, drug-taking music
fan with dyed hair and facial piercings (North Somerset News, April 21). Around
2005-2006, he converted to Islam and began growing a beard and wearing
Salafi-style clothes.
Friends speculated that he converted to Islam after his parents' divorce,
around the same time as he dropped out of school and began living in a homeless
hostel (Western Daily Press, April 22). After he made extremist statements in
Bristol mosques, concerned local Muslims reported him to the police. He was
charged with terrorism offenses on April 29 (BBC, April 29).
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