Radical Islam

This is an amazing story of a young man from California who converts to Islam and finds his way into the heart of Al-Qaeda. Adam Gadahn transformation, and others like him, is a story that I find fascinating. Adam's parents were activist hippies who eschewed modern convinces for a sedate life in the hills. They did not have running water and their television was battery powered. Adam's isolation led him to seek association of which he found in the underground death metal scene in the 1980's but had faded for him when Metallica and similar groups began going mainstream.
He later found the comfort of association from a local mosque. The mosque, coincidentally, was led by Dr. Siddiq who later would meet president Bush. Adam would eventually live with several extremists that led him to Jihad in Pakistan and later with Bin Laden in Afghanistan.
Mark Sageman, a former forensic psychiatrist for the CIA, attempted to find an empirical basis for why people like Adam join groups like Al-Qaeda. His research found that people who felt "isolated, lonely, and emotionally alienated" constituted a majority of extremists. These people are middle class kids from caring families and not ideologically spurned youths from oppressed societies. This runs counter to the lefts claim that somehow the United States is to blame, which is a ludicrous idea.
The story is well written and very interesting and should be read if you have a second to spare.