How And Why Did This Young Man Become A Radicalized Muslim?

Kafeel Ahmed (pic), the 27-year-old Bangalore engineer who died yesterday in Glasgow from horrific burns, was most likely to have been radicalized in Britain, according to Bashir Maan, one of the most respected Muslim community leaders in Scotland. Maan, 80, was expressing a personal opinion, but he has lived in Scotland for half a century, having come to Britain from Pakistan in 1953, and is currently president of the Islamic Centre in Glasgow, the city’s largest mosque.

He has in the past been a Labour parliamentary candidate, a magistrate, a successful businessman and contributed significantly towards ensuring that the radical Islamic politics witnessed in Yorkshire, for example, has — so far — been largely absent in Scotland.

As to why someone as highly educated as Kafeel should try to kill innocent people in London and Glasgow and then end up dousing himself in flames, Maan suggested: “It’s the frustration of certain Muslims concerning what’s going on in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. Only some people have not understood the true meaning of Islam and they deviate to this extent (as Kafeel has done).”

Maan’s own hunch is that Kafeel was radicalized in Britain, though this will probably become clearer during the trial, probably next year, of Kafeel’s younger brother, Sabeel, 26, and the two other doctors charged over the attempted car bombings in London and Glasgow. Such a theory would come as a relief to the Indian authorities but it has to be tested against facts.

Maan told The Telegraph, Calcutta that he did not believe Kafeel was got at by radical mullahs in Bangalore. “I don’t think Bangalore Muslims are like that — they are very moderate. I think it happened in the UK, although I am not sure.”

Police will have to inform Kafeel’s parents, Maqbool and Zakia Ahmed, that their son has died, either through the Indian High Commission in London or the British High Commission in Delhi — neither is understood to have happened. This may sound extremely insensitive in the circumstances but if Kafeel’s parents want his body to be repatriated, they will probably have to foot the bill themselves.

The early indications are that the Indian authorities are unlikely to want to help the family of a terrorist (unless compassion persuades them to change their mind).

Reports say Kafeel entered Queen’s University, Belfast, in 2001, to do a Masters degree in aeronautical engineering and remained in Northern Ireland until 2004. He then began studying for a PhD on “Computational Approach to Ink-jet Printing of Tactile Maps” in the department of design and technology at Anglia Polytechnic University (now called Anglia Ruskin University) in Cambridge.

Kafeel returned to India in August 2005, around the same time that Sabeel moved to Liverpool to work as a junior doctor. In Liverpool, Sabeel’s path crossed that of his second cousin, Dr Mohammed Haneef. Kafeel left his home in Bangalore on May 5 this year to return to Britain.

There has been speculation about what may have been discovered on his computer at home and his last messages to his mother. Within hours of his death, British newspaper websites were already raising the fundamental questions that will need to be answered if the tragedy of Kafeel is not to be repeated.

One person seemed to get to the heart of the matter on a Glasgow paper: “How sad, that an otherwise bright young man should succumb to such brainwashing as to turn him into a potential mass-murderer. Surely the time has come to expose and seriously tackle those who groom these young people, especially those that we can reach in the UK, hiding behind a veneer of ‘a moderate’, but actually give tacit support for the cause.”

***** Perhaps in this tragic episode there is a strong lesson for Malaysians.