A 1,000-page report by security think-tank The Henry Jackson Society has brought together for the first time information on who Britain’s Islamist terrorists actually are.
The study has revealed one in 10 of all Britain’s Islamist terrorists come from just five council wards in Birmingham.
The study covers all 269 individual convictions and suicide bombings and all the nearly 400 offences involved from the very first in 1998 to the beginning of last year.
It shows that terrorists are more likely to have grown up in predominantly Muslim areas.
A terror map of the UK shows 26 of the 269 jihadis came from the highly segregated neighbourhoods. The wards have sizeable areas where the vast majority of the population is Muslim.
The report has found the number of Islamist terror offences doubled in the five years to 2015 from 12 to 23 a year. Women’s involvement in Islamist terrorism in the UK has trebled in the same period from 4 per cent to 11 per cent. Bombing is the most common type of offence planned or committed but there has been an 11-fold increase in plots involving Islamic State-style beheadings and stabbings. Only 10 per cent of terror attacks were carried out by “lone wolves” unconnected to wider extremist networks, the report published in the Daily Mail said.
According to the report, Birmingham, with 234,000 Muslims, has a total of 39 convicted terrorists. This is more than the whole of West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Lancashire combined, even though their Muslim population is higher at 650,000. Only five wards in Birmingham – Springfield, Sparkbrook, Hodge Hill, Washwood Heath and Bordesley Green – account for 26 terrorists.
There were greater numbers of offenders in London – 117 – but they were more widely spread across the city. But 50 per cent were from three boroughs in the east of the capital: Tower Hamlets, Newham and Waltham Forest.
The study found 46 per cent of offences between 2011 and 2015 were carried out by under 25s, compared with 42 per cent before that.
Almost 80 per cent were inspired or directed by extremist networks, most often hate preacher Anjem Choudary’s now banned group al-Muhajiroun, which was linked to a quarter of all UK terror convictions, the media report said.
Mosques or faith charities were places of radicalisation for 38 per cent of terrorists. The internet was cited as a key source of brainwashing in only 35 per cent of cases, although this was rising.
The study finds a clear link between highly segregated Muslim areas and terrorism. Areas that are more integrated have lower rates of offending.
