Just because a person is deeply disturbed does not preclude them from becoming a radical Islamist, or from carrying out a terror attack. The case can be made that mental illness actually makes an individual more vulnerable to recruitment by a variety of groups, including cults and terrorists.
Consider the following piece I wrote - please excuse the lack of formatting - you can view it with proper formatting at http://www.lauramansfield.com/j/showarticle.asp?id=167
Islam: A Haven for Misfit Souls
by Laura Mansfield
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
So reads the inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty. For generations, it has called out to the poor and oppressed of the world, offering a haven that was regarded world-wide as a land of hope, freedom, and opportunity.
But today, in 2005, a new kind of beacon is calling many in America, who feel poor, oppressed, and tired of their current way of life. It calls out to those misfits, who don’t ever feel like they fit in no matter what they do.
For many, that beacon is Islam; those who answer its call too frequently are consumed by its fire, just as the moth who flies into the candle’s flame.
Joe Hinrichs, the Oklahoma University junior who blew himself up on a park bench, while 80,000 fans cheered on their respective teams a few hundred yards away at a college football game, may or may not be a classic example of this.
Hinrichs was what many people call a geek. He was intelligent, very intelligent. His high school physics teacher, Janet Giddings, described Hinrichs this way: “"He was extremely brilliant, just a genius. But like so many bright kids, he had some social issues."
Those who knew him in high school and at Oklahoma University not only agree on his intelligence, but point out that he was a loner.
He joined an engineering fraternity in 2002 at Oklahoma University called the Triangle. But as the end of the spring semester of his freshman year neared, minutes of the meetings of the Triangle fraternity showed that Hinrichs was struggling with his classes:
Minutes of Triangle meeting April 6, 2003, show the following comment attributed to Joe Hinrichs: “Continuing to do nothing”. The minutes of the next weekly meeting, on April 13, show that he was absent.
The following week, April 20, the minutes show that Hinrichs made the comment “Continuing to make academic regress”. And a week later, at the Triangle meeting on April 27, Hinrichs said the following: “Doing badly in my classes -Trying to get late withdrawal from my classe”
Like most college students, Hinrichs was assigned webspace by the university:
http://coecs.ou.edu/Joel.H.Hinrichs/
http://students.ou.edu/H/Joel.H.Hinrichs-1/
His website was first captured by the WayBack machine at webarchive.org on January 18, 2003.
This is Joe Hinrichs' website.
He currently doesn't have anything to put on it, but it does exist and it is here.
________________________________________
Disclaimer: The University of Oklahoma explicitly disclaims any legal liability for the contents of this page or information accessible from this page. Web pages are provided as a privilege to OU students to enhance their life long learning experience, and the opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the institution or its student body.
The website appears to have never been updated after that date.
A websearch for his school issued email address, hinrichs@ou.edu, shows very little.
He was even somewhat estranged from his family. Earlier this year his parents, Elaine and Joel, separated. His father has described receiving a few emails in the last month from him; earlier this year, he visited his family, spending half an hour with them while on a road trip.
We may never know with certainty whether or not Hinrichs was a radical Islamist. At this point, the evidence leads one to suspect that he may have been. His roommate was a Pakistani Muslim, reliable sources have repeatedly insisted that Hinrichs was a frequent visitor at the Islamic Society of Norman, the mosque near his home.
What we do know, based on the information available to us, is that Hinrichs certainly fit the profile of the individual that mosques throughout the United States and Europe target in their outreach: the disenfranchised, the misfits.
Humans are by and large social creatures. One of the most basic of human needs is the need to belong, to feel a part of a larger community. Most people who do not “fit in” and who are loners crave have an intense craving to belong to something – to be loved, so to speak (and not necessarily in a romantic sense).
Islamic groups reach out to these loners, these misfits.
These individuals find acceptance and belonging in the Islamic ummah – often, something they have never had before.
New converts to Islam tend to be the most fervent Muslims. They often embrace Islam with all of their being. They study the Qu’ran and hadith diligently, often learn Arabic, and follow the five pillars of Islam to a degree that many who are born into the faith never imagine.
These individuals, finding acceptance for the first time, give back a strong level of loyalty, very similar in many ways to that found within cults.
This new generation of Muslim, the new convert, what Yousef Bodansky and Jayna Davis describe as “Lilly Whites”, are expected to become a formidable force in the Global Jihad.
They can fit in, and blend in easily because for much of their lives, as misfits, they have been blending, fading into the woodwork so to speak as societal wallflowers. They weren’t noticed before they converted; they probably won’t be noticed now.
They don’t look Middle Eastern; they don’t speak with accents. From all outward appearances, they are loyal Americans.
If these new converts have been embraced into a radical Islamic community, one whose goal is the destruction of the United States, then those radical Islamists have come into possession of a lethal weapon – one that poses a clear and present danger to the security of the United States of America.
Islam is one of many groups calling out to many who are poor, oppressed, and tired of their current way of life. It offers them hope, and a feeling of belonging.
But those come with a price – one that we as a country may someday have to pay.
I am so glad you posted your article. The attempt to purchase the fertilizer - that fact alone should be enough to know Hinrich was up to something big and was more than likely a "lily white".
Thank you for sharing your article Laura, it's very good! (o:
I personally have very strong suspicions that Hinrichs was indeed recruited and perhaps "used" by those who wish to further terrorist ideals. I do not think he intended to die on Oct. 1, 2005. Whether it was an accident or intentional we may never know...
you aren't wrong about lonely and disturbed people being susceptible to (and actively recruited by) radical creeds and cults - refer to Hoffer's "True Believer"