There are various reasons but I would put loss or not having a
identity at the top. To call these people 'Brits' is in fact wrong unless the accident of birth location is the only definition of who you are.
To unravell the cause behind this you have to look deeper at who these 'Brit's are. Most definitly are not Johnny or Jane English. Most are second or third generation immigrants and within that group most are Pakistani. Other groups at risk I would say are Somali and now of course we had a Indian from Dewsbury.
I am going to look at the British Pakistani because they are the primary group that provides cannon fodder for these jihadi groups. We can safely exclude the 'disadvantaged' rubbish as the truth is most are 'advantaged' so economics is not a issue.
My belief is the major reason is
lack of identity. Pakistani's as a whole have no identity, They are rootless. This is obvious to even a lay person. Take a drive down Stratford Rd, Birmingham which has huge Pakistani population. Mile after mile there are shops ( which blows the disadvantaged bull ) and not one and
I mean one give away which community they service.
They have "
Asian" bakers, "
Halal" meat shops, "
Indian" restaurents, "
Dhesi" greengrocers", "
Muslim" charity, "
Islamic" fashions, "
Apna" tailors. I know, you know, they know that they are just "Pak*" but by god they will use all manner of labels but conspicously avoid "Pakistan".
Compare this with other recent migrant groups. Comapred to Pakistani's these groups probably make less than 5% but I have seen "Latvian" sklep, "Slovak" and even "Kurdistan" when Kurdistan does not even exist. As regards people saying Pakistan is not used because of lack of differance between them and Indians. Oh yeh. Grab a Latvian, Estonian, Lithuanian and see if you can figure the differance. To my eyes there is non.
This lack of identity led to a one dimentional definition based on religion. As the second generation grew up in UK many struggled to accomodate with their surroundings. If they had a strong identity like Turks, Arabs, Iranians, Kurds, Malays they would have fallen back on that and created a hybrid hypenated "British Pakistani" like "British Turk".
Because this did not happen they fell back on religion. When this identity malaise was begining to become a issue amongst the British Pakistani dispora ( early to late 1980s) it so happened that political Islam was being harnessed at geopolitical level by USA/Pakistan/Saudia Arabia in order to defeat Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The structures being built to wage the jihadi war machine against Soviets were place in the Af-Pak region.
Those structures are still intact and are gerating a strain of virus that attaches to a host who has weak sense of identity. The result is mosques/madaris in UK almost all affliates of 'mother' oranizations back in Pakistan are busy filling the heads of rootless British Pakistani's. I have seen the ffects of this from early 1980s. If you look at community groups from early 1980s they would invariably be titled "British Pakistani". As a example not far from where I live there is a old community centre built in early 1980s. On the rusted gate is the "British Pakistan Community Centre" with union Jack and the green crescent and star.
This would be impossible today. Nowdays it would be titled "Islamic blah, blah" or some other Arabic title. By late 1980s the term "British Muslim" came into currency in particular the Rushdie affair gave the Mullah types a golden chance to consolidate their vision. Today the "British Muslim" is the standard qualfier for British Pakistani.
Everybody is is British hypenated "Kurd, Turk, Arab, Syrian but Pakistani's are "Muslim". This is a ridicalous marker of a non existan group. A Nigeran Muslim, a Malian Muslim, a Malay Muslim, a Bosnian Muslim or a Pakistani Muslim" have nothing in common. That would be like using "black hair" or "ginger hair" as markers like "British Ginger" or "British Blonde" or "British straight Black hair".
So when the identity of these second generation immigrants became "Muslim" it follows thay are going to start looking at the world through those spectacles. Result is any problems anywhere in any country with Muslims and these guy's are having sleepless nights because 'their brothers' are being done in. Some of them then of course go off to fight for their self identified Muslim cause. In short these guys have now contracted out to feel the pain of a diverse group of 1.3 billion people and off they go.
And just to test my theory why not check out the actuall background of these so called "Muslims". Most will turn out to be nothing but your plain Pakistani. Any exceptions will also have similar identity issues like Somali or Africans who struggle to figure out who they are. Very rarely will you find a Afghan, Turk, Iranian, Syrian or Iraqi although you would expect quite few of them because they are in line of direct fire.
Faisal Shazad is a typical example of what I am talking about. His father was a senior officer in Pakistan Airforce and Faisal enjoyed a upper middle class upbringing and look what he ened up doing.
Faisal Shahzad - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ps. Dhesi I believe means "home" and Apna means "ours"
@Steve781
