Watch Murad Ahmed and Daniel Finkelstein on Islamophobia

Hello. I think we’ve met, I’m an Angry Young Muslim. Don’t recognise me? That’s all right, we all look alike. Well, if you’ve got a Muslim coworker, friend or neighbour — they’re probably just like me. Angry about the Iraq War, angry with the Bush Administration, angry about police and media treatment of Muslims. But also really angry that, last week, radical Islamists decided to declare their jihad against us as well.

On Wednesday the police uncovered an alleged plot to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier. If true, these plotters were engaged in mafioso posturing, a blatant attempt to intimidate members of their own community. And plenty of Muslims are in a rage now that they have become targets in a fight the radicals have picked and they don’t want any part of.

Muslims are angry because we’re scared, and we have been for a while. Just like everyone else, we wonder whether we’ll get blown up on the Tube. But we also worry that we’ll get shot in the same carriage for looking brown, and as a result, suspicious. These are irrational fears, but they are genuinely felt.

Here’s another thing that makes my blood boil. A poll for Policy Exchange last week found that about a third of younger Muslims would like to live under Sharia. Ask a stupid question. Ask these kids if they can explain the details of Sharia. When they can’t, ask them what they’re really upset about.

British Muslims, usually of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin, are the ethnic group most likely to be unemployed, poor and live in overcrowded homes. They’re born angry, and now need a reason to be. Radical Islamism has become an off-the-peg label that young Muslims can wear to rebel against their dads and wider British society. Like punks before them, they’ll grow up and grow out of it.

In the meantime, these people make for good sound bites on Newsnight. After the alleged beheading plot was revealed, it was depressing to see the same old crazies ramble on about police treatment of the community. Hello? Shouldn’t you be upset that a brother was about to be executed too? I am, but then I didn’t get a microphone shoved in my face. I’m not the right kind of angry for TV. And I sport merely stubble, not a beard.

It’s also a failing of our “silent majority” for being silent for too long. For cowering in the face of the perceived moral superiority of nutcases because they seem to believe in the faith more than we do. It’s time to get a megaphone and tell these people that they don’t speak for us.

So it seems that British Muslims and other Britons are angry at the same thing. We Muslims have our demons. But remember to speak to the better angels of our nature as well.

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