Smash hit

Also clear from the polling is the level of alienation many British Muslims feel from the rest of society. Nearly one in five (18%) say they feel little or no loyalty to this country, and alienation levels among men, particularly young men, are more than three times higher than those among Muslim women living here.

Some 32% of respondents to the poll believed “western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end”. Of these, the equivalent of some 16,000 declared themselves willing to resort to violence if necessary to achieve this.

Coupled with the revelation that 52% of those interviewed believe “British political leaders don’t mean it when they talk about equality”, and that “they regard the lives of white British people as more valuable than the lives of British Muslims”, it paints a picture of a fractured society that is far from the cohesive front that the moderate British Muslim leadership and Downing Street wish to foster.

It also highlights the gulf between the moderate — and older — religious leadership and the impressionable, alienated and politically militant Muslim men to be found here.

Such young men are easy recruits for organisations such as al-Ghurabaa, which is clear about its commitment to radical Islam.

"Any Muslim that denies that terror is a part of Islam is kafir [an unbeliever],” says the statement issued by al-Ghurabaa, which argues that a ceasefire offered by Osama Bin Laden after the Madrid bombings was ignored, and that the public’s alleged silence about military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq means it is to blame for the atrocities visited upon it.

Another, anonymous radical pamphlet believed to have emanated from London argues that Muslims are specifically prohibited from showing any sympathy for the victims of Islamic terrorism.

Such emotionless reaction has been displayed within recent weeks by Mohammed Bouyeri, the alleged killer of Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh, who in court last week looked the dead man’s mother in the eye and said: “I can’t feel for you because you are an infidel.”

The 9/11 hijackers were instructed to show no sympathy for their victims, and if necessary to slaughter them like sheep.

Is it possible to reach beyond the alienation and extremism? The example of America offers some hope. A graphic illustration of the harmony that can be achieved is Dearborn, Michigan. Not just another middle American town, it is also the largest Arab city in the world outside the Middle East, and together with the wide Detroit metropolitan area of which it is part, it is home to more than 120,00 Arab and Muslim immigrants. And to the vast majority of its inhabitants, feelings of alienation are, well, quite alien.

“We are American first, Arab second, says Neal AbuNab, a Kuwait-born Palestinian businessman, film maker and columnist on Dearborn’s Arab American News, who has lived in the US for 25 years.

“After September 11, our community was under siege, we faced the backlash. I personally lost a business. But I weighed my love for the country that had given me a home, and the love for my faith, and you know what? I found no contradiction.”

At the Dearborn-based Islamic Centre of America, the largest mosque in the western hemisphere, “we are as American as apple pie”, says Eide Alawan, the centre’s interfaith and outreach liaison officer.

He is appalled that the London bombings have been committed by British-born Muslims and that certain mosques here have become platforms for extremist clerics.

“I cannot believe this. How did they let that happen? You occasionally hear about this in parts of the US but here, this would never happen. We would not allow it to happen. We police ourselves,” said Alawan.

“If anyone preached in favour of bombing in this mosque, the community would be on top of them. There’s no room for a ‘but’ about condemning violence. If you kill me, you kill the whole of humanity.”

AbuNab, who spent three years in Birmingham as an engineer for Ford in the 1980s, says building an Arab-American identity — and thus building a strong British-Asian identity — just as other arrivals, such as the Italians and Irish have, is crucial.

“In Europe, as a migrant you are welcomed, but it is insular, you stay in your quarters,” he says. “In America, the entire economic system is based on diversity. You have to be open to every culture to sell them your product or else you won’t survive. So, sooner or later, everyone ends up in bed together.”

“Our kids are American,” says Alawan. “They realise what this country has done for our people.”

The challenge facing the moderate Muslim leadership in Britain is to get that same message across to its alienated and increasingly radicalised youth.

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