^^^^
The peanut gallery jumps in with ignorant responses, I see.

First, I didn't write that "the old British empire [sic] was good cos [sic] they built the railways." I clearly wrote that "sometimes European colonialism made things worse." However, unlike your post, mine was more nuanced and recognizes the reality that some good things came out of it too. If you want to think that the old British Empire was 100% evil and was worse than Hitler, Stalin and Satan, that's your right, but that exaggerated false belief won't magically become true just because you want to believe it.

Second, "No one has committed more religious terror than European Christians"? Really? Do you have any evidence to support these extremely insane claim? "Majority of this board live in a country founded on it"? I guess you mean the United States was founded on religious terror. Really? So George Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, among others, are now religious terrorists? Wow. Insane. That's like the worst of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn with the volume turned up to 11.

Third, I don't know why you went off on a tangent about the "war on terror" and recent Western interventions in the Middle East, but a lot of people on this board and myself have not supported them. I didn't support invading Iraq under Bush/Cheney, I didn't support Obama/Clinton bombing Libya and Syria or supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. I don't care for the Saudis or the Qataris either, but they're not at war with the rest of the Middle East and they don't support ISIS. Yes, the Saudis have exported Wahhabism, but even other forms of Islam that are not Wahhabi or Salafi are intolerant. Go look at the polls for yourself to see how many Muslims support killing apostates.

You also won't find me defending how the U.S. and other Western countries supported Syrian Sunni rebels who either defected to ISIS or Al Qaeda or agreed with their beliefs. I always disagreed with that policy. Not much an internet poster from California can do about it though.

I can't answer specifically what a larger number of black converts to Islam became jihadis, but there could be a number of factors. The UK is very secular and much of its Christianity is Christian in name only. The extent of Adrian Elms' beliefs could have been believing that God exists and that he celebrated Christmas. As he grew up he was probably disgruntled and unhappy about his life and thought Islam would give it more order, purpose and discipline. Since the UK and the Labour Party has been on a kick to hate everything British, it's easy to see why he also would feel that way. He may have felt a sense of anomie in an absurd society, so it would have been only natural that he became a criminal. "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die" was what the Stoics used to say; a modern version is "Live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse." As Dostoevsky wrote, "If there is no God, everything is permitted." That was how he lived, but it probably didn't bring him joy or purpose.

At some point he converted to Islam and changed his name to Khalid Masood. As a convert he not only wanted to be a Muslim, but the best Muslim he could be. How does one do that? Not just by going to masjid and the five pillars of Islam, but by studying the Quran and Hadith. He wanted to follow the example of Muhammad. That meant hating the kuffar and the hypocrites. It meant knowing that if he died as a martyr he would ascend to Paradise. Makes perfect sense.