Now the family of Shahera Akther Islam, 20, fear that she has been murdered in the name of the religion that she loved by terrorists determined to destroy her very British way of life.

With more than 50 other people, Ms Islam is now missing, feared dead. Nazmal Hasan, her uncle, told The Times yesterday that they were desperate to find Ms Islam, who was such a vibrant part of their lives.

“She enjoyed fashion, loved to shop in the West End and would usually carry her Gucci or Burberry handbags. But she was also a practising Muslim. She lives her life to the full,” he said. She defies many of the stereotypes of a Muslim woman, he said, by refusing to be demure and always speaking her mind.

“Anyone and everyone who knows her falls in love with her because she is such a bubbly person,” said Mr Hasan, a trainee actuary. The fact that she may have been murdered by people acting in the name of Islam has devastated Shamsul and Romena Islam, her devout parents, he said.

“The people who committed this outrage are not human beings. They are terrorists, pure and simple,” Mr Hasan said.

Ms Islam, from Plaistow, East London, has always been proud to call herself a real East Ender. She was born at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. She would occasionally wear the traditional hijab, or headscarf, for visits to the East London Mosque in Whitechapel. Like thousands of other Londoners, Ms Islam, the eldest of three children, left her family home on Thursday morning with plans of taking her usual journey to Islington, North London, where she works as a bank clerk.

Wearing her Co-Operative Bank uniform of blue trousers and a white shirt, she said goodbye to her family, before walking to Plaistow Tube station.

Mr Hasan, 25, said that he believed his niece was on the Circle Line train travelling to Liverpool Street at 8.51 when a bomb exploded. An hour later, she appears to have tried to call his mobile telephone but he failed to answer it in time.

“I received a call from her telephone, which I missed. I tried to call back but her phone is going to voicemail,” he said.

Since then, the family has been frantically trying to locate her in hospitals. “We have registered her with the police as missing but we have no information,” Mr Hasan said.

Mr Hasan said that he had been to eight London hospitals looking for his niece. “I am hoping she is in hospital somewhere,” he said.

Her mother, Romena, is racked with guilt because she persuaded Ms Islam to go to work that day, even though she had been planning to take time off.

“She wanted to stay at home, because she had a dental appointment in the afternoon, but her mother told her that she should go to work anyway. It is awful,” he said.

Mr Hasan said that Ms Islam would have been filled with despair at the bombings. “She would have been horrified and questioned the logic of some of these people. Like most other Londoners, she would have been filled with anger towards the bombers. She loved London, and Britain, to the core,” he said.

Ms Islam’s parents came to Britain in the mid Sixties. She has visited her country of origin, but regards herself as British, said Mr Hasan.

“This is her home, where she grew up, where her friends and family are,” he said.

She is extremely close to her parents, he said. When she was not at the cinema with friends, she was at home cooking for her family.

“They have always been a very tight unit. She tells her Mum everything,” he said.

Ms Islam was not the only British Muslim to have been caught up in the bombings. Mustafa Kurtuldu, 24, a design company manager, was in the next carriage to the one with the bomb that exploded near Liverpool Street.

He said that the bombings were unforgiveable. “No one knows yet who is behind this, but I can say that it is a disgusting act, shameful and abhorrent,” he said.

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