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"One Jewish gay kid even converted to islam."

I can't even begin to fathom the thought process behind that.

Islam is all about submission to Allah, and the fatalistic belief that everything that happens is "Allah's Will".

Some people are attracted to this. Nothing is your fault, it's all Allah's Will. No need for personal responsibility, nor for striving to make yourself better.

It's also a reason why some people like Communism, and some cult movements -- to submerge themselves in The Group.

Read the book The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements (1951)

From one of the reviews:

"The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause."--Eric Hoffer, The true Believer
None of the terrorists of September 11 were destitute. Some even had wives and children. Nevertheless, they committed suicide for their cause. Anyone wanting to understand this horrible irony would do well to read Eric Hoffer's 1951 classic, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) was a self-educated US author and philosopher who was a migratory worker and longshoreman until 1967. He achieved immediate acclaim with his first book, The true Believer.
According to Hoffer, the early converts to any mass movement come from the ranks of the "frustrated," that is, "people who..feel that their lives are spoiled or wasted." The true believers' "Faith in [their] holy cause is to a considerable extent a subsitute for [their] lost faith in [themselves]." He says that we are prone to throw ourselves into a mass movement to "supplant and efface the self we want to forget." He then adds, "We cannot be sure that we have something worth living for unless we are ready to die for it."

According to Hoffer, the early converts to any mass movement come from the ranks of the "frustrated," that is, "people who..feel that their lives are spoiled or wasted." The true believers' "Faith in [their] holy cause is to a considerable extent a subsitute [misspelled] for [their] lost faith in [themselves]." He says that we are prone to throw ourselves into a mass movement to "supplant and efface the self we want to forget." He then adds, "We cannot be sure that we have something worth living for unless we are ready to die for it."

Such a general diagnosis can be used to dis everything from the Tea Party to Christianity, rather than having begun with esteem of proven principles, precepts and probity, and thus finding fellowship with leaders and others of like mind and heart, and in principled dissent from those who distorted them.