He may represent the front-line foot soldiers of jihad in the West: an Avril Lavigne-singing, moonwalking Canadian-born Muslim who loves hocky, music and dancing. Terrorism suspect Khuram Sher was picked up by the cops yesterday, the third member of a group that could have been plotting an attack on a North American city.

This goofball could represent an important and overlooked trend discussed recently in the Atlantic regarding the recruitment of Islamist terrorists in our midst: the rise of the nitwits.

To be sure, some terrorists are steely and skilled—people like Mohamed Atta, the careful and well-trained head of the 9/11 hijackers. Their leaders and recruiters can be lethally subtle and manipulative, but the quiet truth is that many of the deluded foot soldiers are foolish and untrained, perhaps even untrainable...

 

If our terrorist enemies have been successful at cultivating a false notion of expertise, they’ve done an equally convincing job of casting themselves as pious warriors of God. The Taliban and al-Qaeda rely on sympathizers who consider them devoted Muslims fighting immoral Western occupiers. But intelligence picked up

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