It is the question which every thinking person in Britain is agonising over — why are an increasing number of young Muslims, born and brought up in Britain and outwardly so “normal,” turning to terrorism?

The answer, the Muslim community in the UK says, can be summed up in two words: “foreign policy”. Elders of the Muslim community put the blame on Tony Blair. If only he had not joined President George W. Bush in invading Iraq in the aftermath of 9/11, if only he had shown more concern over the plight of Palestinians and if only he had been quicker in calling for an immediate ceasefire when the Israelis were killing Lebanese civilians with American bombs shipped through British airports, the worst terrorist excesses might have been avoided.

Among the 24 arrested for the alleged plot to blow up 10 trans-Atlantic aircraft was a 17-year-old boy, Abdul Muneem Patel, who, because of his age, should not even have been named by the Bank of England which froze the assets of 19 of those accused in the terror plot.

There was a real sense of awakening after the July 7 bombs in London last year when four young men blew themselves up on the Underground and a number 30 bus, killing 52 people and injuring 700. “It must somehow be our fault that we have driven young men to take their own lives,” reckoned a section of British opinion. “Young Muslims are angry, deprived, unemployed, alienated, suffer discrimination and see no other way in which they can protest against Tony Blair’s policies.”

Politicians have been pretty unanimous in proclaiming that the vast majority of Britain’s 1.6 million Muslim population is law abiding and that it is only a fringe element that has been “brainwashed” into espousing terrorism.

Some have blamed a number of the imams who preach in an estimated 1,000 mosques in Britain. Others have pointed the finger of blame at madrasahs in Pakistan, partly because at least two of the July 7 bombers are believed to have visited them.

What everyone is agreed on is that Britain has a “Muslim problem”. The political right has seized the opportunity to condemn policies aimed at promoting “multicultural Britain” and insist that in future immigrants and their descendants should be expected to become more “British” — whatever that means.

Meanwhile, it is easy to detect the changes taking place in British society. By its very nature, all Islamic terrorists are Muslims but all Muslims are not terrorists. Police would not be doing their job if they were not focusing their attention on young Muslims. The consequence is that young Muslim men, the majority of whom are innocent, feel they are being picked on as part of the policy of “ethnic profiling”. And since young Muslims believe that their religion is under threat, it drives them into becoming even more Muslim. For example, while the hejab was a rarity among young Muslim women even 10 years ago, today it is worn as almost a badge of honour and defiance in many parts of the country. One of the ironies is that middle-class Pakistanis from Karachi and Lahore, who come to Britain on holiday, find their co-religionists more orthodox than people back in Pakistan.

Actually, even to refer to British Muslims as a monolithic entity is a mistake. The dilemma Britain is currently facing appears to involve mainly Muslims of Pakistani origin, who constitute 43 per cent of the 1.6 million population.

Bangladeshis, who make up 17 per cent, previously saw themselves as Bengalis or Bangladeshis but some of the young now like to describe themselves as “Muslims” first. Indian Muslims, who make up 9 per cent, appear not to be part of the Muslim protest movement though they were angered by Narendra Modi’s policies in Gujarat.

The rest of the Muslim population is made up of Arabs, Iranians, Africans and converts, who may share Pakistani anger over Blair’s foreign policy but that is where their dissent mostly seems to end. Nor is it wise to lump all Pakistani Muslims into one group. Not only is there a generational gap between those who came as immigrants and their more radical and religious British-born children, but there are differences, too, between relatively well off Pakistanis in London and the south and, say, the Mirpuris in Bradford or those in Birmingham who like to call themselves “Kashmiris”.

The insufferably superior air affected by unsympathetic British Indians — “look at you, look at us, we are the biggest democracy in the world and now an economic superpower, too” — hasn’t exactly helped. What is even more deplorable is that in the last couple of years, some Hindu bigots have been attempting to set themselves up as leaders of Britain’s one million Hindus in an effort to take advantage of the Muslim predicament.

Historical factors have brought Britain to the point it has reached. It is possible to go back to Lord Curzon’s division of Bengal in 1905 for a proper understanding of Bangladeshi Muslims in Britain — the Viceroy’s strategy of “divide and rule” appears to have resurfaced in this country with equally harmful consequences. Successive British governments have had a policy of allowing Arabs groups, opposed to their own governments, to operate from “Londonistan” — some turned against Britain after 9/11. And the Rushdie crisis in 1989, sparked by the publication of The Satanic Verses, started the process of politicising and radicalising Muslim youth in Britain.

The process accelerated when the West appeared to condone the massacre of Muslims in Bosnia in the 1990s, thereby encouraging the birth of militant Islamic groups in British university campuses. Out of this cauldron emerged such a well educated young British Pakistani as Omar Sheikh of the London School of Economics, later to become the kidnapper of The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. Since then others, including two British Muslim suicide bombers in Israel, have gone down the path of terrorism.

This is not a problem that is going to go away. Blair has been trying to get through to Muslim youths by talking to “community leaders”. But many of the latter are self-appointed and one has been unrealistic enough to press for an introduction of Shariah law for Muslims. Most of the others have highlighted a variety of Muslim grievances over the years. Now, the older Pakistanis, for all their huffing and puffing, find they can no longer control the young whom they unleashed in the first place. A group of elders wrote to the prime minister with the message which can be summed up as follows: “Mr Blair, it’s your foreign policy which has turned some of our youths into terrorists.”

Nevertheless, one should not present too apocalyptic a vision. The overwhelming majority of British Muslims consists of decent citizens, trying as best as possible to get on with day-to-day living. But the actions of a few have raised a fundamental question which few are willing to address — can the Britain of Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, parliamentary democracy, cricket and “after you” and “thank you” reach any sort of accommodation with militant Muslim youths? The prospect wouldn’t have amused Curzon but if any society can find a “fudge” it will be the British.