CENTRAL figures in the alleged terrorism cell that the police say was planning to blow up transatlantic airliners are linked through an ultra-orthodox religious movement.

Friends and family of suspects arrested last week have said that they were followers of Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic missionary group that rejects secular society and advocates strict adherence to an Islamic dress code and lifestyle. Western security agencies have become increasingly concerned that a movement once viewed as pious and apolitical may have become a fertile recruiting ground for terrorists.

Assad Sarwar, 26, who was arrested in High Wycombe last week, is said by his family to have become a Tabligh follower after dropping out of university. His brother, Amjad, said: “He was at Tablighi Jamaat, which is a sect in Islam which encourages the youth to grow beards, pray five times a day and, how the Prophet lived on a daily basis, that’s how you should run your life. He got actively involved in that and thought that religion is more important than study.”

Friends of Waheed Zaman, 22, who was arrested in Walthamstow, East London, said that he was also a Tabligh follower. The group’s preachers regularly visited the mosque where most of those arrested in East London worshipped.

The European headquarters of Tablighi Jamaaat, which was formed in India in 1927, are in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, where it has a 4,000-capacity mosque. Mohammed Sidique Khan, the ringleader of the 7/7 suicide bombers, lived in Dewsbury and attended the Tabligh mosque. He also went with another bomber, Shehzad Tanweer, to a mosque in Leeds controlled by the movement.

Other known al-Qaeda operatives have previously been Tabligh disciples, including six men from Lackawanna, New York, who admitted attending religious training in Pakistan before going to an al-Qaeda camp over the Afghan border.

The Tabligh movement denies any involvement with terrorism and community leaders maintain that it is “totally apolitical, almost allergic to any discussion of politics”. It is not an affiliate of the Muslim Council of Britain, but several of the mosques it controls do belong to the organisation.

Intelligence agencies in the United States, France and Germany are monitoring the movements of Tabligh’s band of travelling preachers. Two were recently expelled from Bavaria. German sources said that it was not being treated as a terrorist movement but that there were concerns about Tabligh followers who became attracted to violent jihad groups.

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