Europese bekeerlingen tot de islam: risico op radicalisering?

With this contribution we want to focus explicitly on an aspect of security literature, which promotes a prevailing view that European who publicly proclaim themselves to have converted to Islam represent a security threat. This view is based on the premise that a majority of such converts lack the necessary religious knowledge, and so are not able to make distinction between the different interpretations of Islam. Thus they are easy prey for certain types of fundamentalists (Roy, 2008: 106). Also there is a widely held belief that converts, because their devotion to the new faith and community, want to prove themselves,and are prepared to do everything, even if it is the most cruel acts of political violence (Cesari, 2008: 103).