At the edge of almost every British cemetery on the Western Front is a corner of a foreign field reserved for non-Christian soldiers: the Hindu, Buddhist and, in many cases, Muslim servicemen who fought and died in British uniform.

Yet the bloody events this week in Texas and Afghanistan will inevitably reinforce a longstanding suspicion that Muslims cannot be trusted, undermining efforts to recruit more into the ranks.

In Helmand, an Afghan police officer killed five British soldiers and fled. In Fort Hood, Major Nidal Malik Hasan shouted Allahu Akbar (God is Great) before opening fire. The two events were separated by thousands of miles; the first was an act of terrorism, while the motives of the second are still being established. But both will bolster a perception that loyalty to Islam will often outweigh loyalty to comrades, uniform, or country.

“His name was Hussain, wasn’t it?” said my taxi driver yesterday. “What did they expect?”

That prejudice does historical disservice to the thousands of Muslims who have served in British uniform in the past. Indian Muslims made up a key part of the Indian Army in colonial times, and fought with notable gallantry and success in both world wars. The British colonial regime depended on the sepoys, a combination of Muslim and Hindu soldiers.

Yet suspicion of non-Christian recruits has lingered. Official documents released in 2005 showed that for 20 years from 1957 the British Army secretly restricted the number of recruits from ethnic minorities. Today Muslims represent a tiny fraction of the British military. Of the 2.4 million British Muslims, only 350 serve in the Armed Forces.

The military authorities have made repeated efforts to recruit more Muslims. But potential recruits continue to be put off by fear of racial or religious discrimination, a reluctance compounded by opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Extremists have sought to exploit the perception that a good Muslim cannot also be a good British soldier. In July 2006 Lance Corporal Jabron Hashmi, a British citizen born in Pakistan, became the first British Muslim soldier killed in Afghanistan. “He was Muslim and he was British,” Zoubia, his sister, told The Times. “He was serving his country but he was also serving his religion.”

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