Many more towns and cities in proud new multicultural Britannia will soon be breaking this record. “How former mill town Dewsbury in West Yorkshire is linked to more than a dozen Islamist extremists and terrorists including Britain’s youngest suicide bomber,” by Ollie Gillman, MailOnline, June 15, 2015:
Set in a quiet corner of West Yorkshire, on first glance the former mill town of Dewsbury looks perfectly innocent.
But bubbling away under the surface of the thriving community is a deep-rooted problem with hardline Islamic extremism.
Home to Talha Asmal – the 17-year-old boy believed to be Britain’s youngest suicide bomber – Dewsbury is also where two of Britain’s 7/7 bombers lived, including the man who masterminded the attack, Mohammad Sidique Khan.
Khan bombed the Edgware Road London Underground train in 2005, killing himself and five others, and was the eldest of the four attackers.
He is thought to have indoctrinated the younger bombers, including Shehzad Tanweer, 22, who killed seven as he blew himself up between Liverpool Street and Aldgate.
Tanweer attended Tablighi mosque in Dewsbury with Khan, who was originally from Beeston, near Leeds, before the attack, which claimed the lives of 52 innocent people and injured more than 700.
The mosque is just three minutes’ walk away from Talha’s home.
Qari Asim, imam at the Makkah Mosque in Leeds, said he did not know why Dewsbury was linked to extremism.
He said: ‘As an Imam, we are not aware of mosques preaching radicalisation but it must be happening somewhere, whether it’s underground or online.
‘It’s like a paedophile ring. I hate to say it, but it is. They prey on vulnerability. They persuade them there’s a great life ahead of them in Syria and Iraq but we know it’s not like that.
‘We don’t know why there is a problem in Dewsbury. Ultimately it comes down to people preying on people’s vulnerability.
‘They could be in London, Cardiff or indeed Dewsbury.
‘People who see radicalisation in mosques have a duty to report it. It’s our duty to our religion, our nation and the globe – because what we’re seeing with ISIS is a global threat.
‘Human life is sacred in Islam, and to see a young person from one of our communities tricked into killing others and dying for the sake of this false ISIS ideology is truly heart-breaking….
Heart-breaking, yes. And odd that so many are “tricked” in the same way.