Such Lovely Lads

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Extremist ideas from Pakistan would not take root in Britain if the ground there was not fertile. Sadly, it is. Although the British Muslim community, 1.6 million strong, is not the largest in Europe, it plays host, says French terrorism analyst Roland Jacquard, to "arguably the largest number of radicalized young men." Polls bear out that conclusion. In a survey for Britain's Channel 4 this year, no less than 22% of Muslims agreed with the proposition that the subway bombings were justified because of "British support for the war on terror." Those under 24 were twice as likely to excuse the attacks as those over 45. A recent Pew study found that 15% of British Muslims identify themselves with fundamentalists. And among those British Muslims surveyed, a remarkable 81%--a percentage higher than that for Muslims not just in France and Germany but also in Egypt and Jordan--said they thought of themselves as Muslims first and citizens of their native country second.

Why is Britain's Muslim community seemingly so susceptible to radical ideas? Some of the pat explanations of a few years ago have had to be discarded. The well-known radical mosques that were at the center of "Londonistan" in the 1990s have had their wings clipped; as the investigations into the subway bombings showed, most young radicals don't get their ideas from mosques at all. They gather in youth clubs, gyms, bookstores or simply in someone's back room. (In a poll released in September by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, only 2% of British Muslims said the mosque was their primary source of religious knowledge; 31% cited books, pamphlets, websites and videos.) Nor can it be easily argued that social deprivation or ethnic discrimination breeds radicalism; many of those arrested last week were from middle-class homes--the sort that send their children to university--in standard British multicultural neighborhoods, where Muslims, white Britons and more recent immigrants from Eastern Europe live together.

Plainly, for some devout Muslims, modern Britain--an almost crazily nondeferential, undisciplined, messy society--is an unappealing place. In the Channel 4 poll, 35% said they preferred to have Muslim neighbors, and 28% thought British society does not treat women with respect. Of those ages 18 to 24, 1 in 3 said they would like to live under Shari'a law. At the same time, a series of high-profile cases have soured relations between the police and some in the community. Many Muslims interviewed this week brought up, unprompted, Forest Gate, referring to a police raid on a house in that East London neighborhood that led in June to one Muslim's being shot in the shoulder, although nothing was found that led to terrorism-related charges. "I haven't trusted the police for a long time," said Zee, a law student coming out of a mosque in Walthamstow last Friday. "I didn't even trust them before the Forest Gate raid. Just because we're Muslims, we're being targeted."