Anglo-Australian do-gooder converts to Jihad

Everybody seems to be treating this as a great mystery.  It is not.  Do-gooders are mostly Leftists and the Left has a romance with Islam.  They love its destructiveness.  So for a Leftist to convert to Islam is only a small step

He was a well-educated boy who was working with underprivileged children in Asia and dreamed of one day becoming a lawyer or doctor.

But family and friends of 18-year-old Oliver Bridgeman are devastated by revelations he had led a double life and is suspected of joining an al-Qaeda linked terror group in Syria.

The blonde-haired teen, from Toowoomba, on Queensland's Darling Downs, had reportedly converted to Islam after becoming friends with several Muslim students at the school.

His friends believed the former high school captain and talented rugby league player had been transformed and brainwashed by the 'wrong people', The Courier-Mail reports.

'Oh my God! Oh my God!' one friend said.  'We knew he had gone a bit strange but never imagined he would do anything like this. He was just a kid who loved school, football and music.'

Another stunned friend said: 'He's a really good guy and smart too but obviously the wrong people have been in his ear and he's been led down the wrong path.'

Federal counter-terrorism police intelligence suggests he is in a conflict zone and Mr Bridgeman is suspected to have taken up arms with a terrorist group.

His last movements on his Facebook account shows a series of photos during a stint working with children in Indonesia in March to his high school graduation from last year.

At the same time, Mr Bridgeman was building a separate account, under the alias Yusef Oli, where he documented his thoughts and photographs of himself posing at mosques after he found religion.

'Extremism is as a result of lying against Allah,' one post from December 2014 reads.

'For when the extremist fails to produce evidence and interpretation, he resorts to lying against Allah to fulfill (sic) his whims.'

Islamic Society of Toowoomba president Dr Shahjahan Khan said Mr Bridgeman had attended some prayer sessions but believed the teen was radicalised online.  'Whatever he is doing is no way linked to Toowoomba,' he told ABC radio.  'I think it's something else that comes from online. It has nothing to do with the Toowoomba community or Toowoomba Islam.'

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).