For the past weeks, Britain has been transfixed by the alleged al-Qaeda related plots to blow up 12 transatlantic jets over five US cities. If the plot was real (and if it had succeeded), it would have killed thousands more people than 9/11.

Diane Abbott

A Metropolitan police spokesman said, "This was intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale". Six of the people arrested live in my community in Hackney. Three weeks after the plot was discovered, it still features in every news bulletin.

As I write, 11 people have been charged, nine people are still being interrogated and the Metropolitan police have promised that the inquiries "will span the globe". Most of the suspects are Muslims of Pakistani origin. But a few Muslim converts of Caribbean origin have popped up in key roles.

In June of last year, London was hit by a wave of bombings that killed 54 people. A central figure was Jermaine Lindsey. He let off a bomb on the Piccadilly underground tube line that killed 26 people. He is always described in the press as "Jamaican-born" although strictly speaking he is British. He is also described as the "ringleader", although it is not clear what the evidence for this is.
He had converted to Islam when he was 15 and changed his name to Abdullah Shaheed Jamal. His mother, Mariam McLeod, who had remarried and is now living in Grenada, described him at a tearful press conference as "a perfect son and family man". His stunned half-sister, Dana Reid, was interviewed on British television and insisted that he was a very loving brother.

Another Muslim convert of Jamaican origin, Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal, apparently influenced Lindsey. Sheikh was born in Jamaica as Trevor William Forest and converted to Islam at the age of 16. He was jailed in 2003 for nine years after being convicted of soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred. It was the first conviction of its kind in Britain.

The British authorities apparently plan to deport him to Jamaica when he is finally released. In his lectures he praised Osama bin Laden and encouraged violence. Hundreds of Muslims attended his lectures in mosques. They were also videoed and seen by thousands more in Britain and America.

Amongst the people who are alleged to have attended his lectures are James Ujaama, a US citizen jailed for conspiring to help the Taliban in Afghanistan; Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber" (son of a Jamaican father) who is currently serving a life sentence in a US jail for his plot to kill 198 people on a transatlantic flight in 2001; and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was jailed for life over his involvement in the 11th September 2001 attacks.

The most recent Muslim convert of Caribbean origin to hit the headlines is Umar Islam. He is one of the 11 people who have been charged in relation to the alleged plot to blow up 12 airliners. The exact charges are conspiracy to murder and preparing acts of terrorism.

He was born Brian Oliver Young. It is not clear what part of the Caribbean his parents actually came from, but his Caribbean origin is always mentioned in news reports. The British media love to play up the Caribbean origins of any terrorist suspects, even though they may be British citizens. Associating black men with terrorist violence is obviously irresistible.

The interesting question is what attracts young black men, brought up as Christians, not just to Islam, but also to the most extreme forms of Islam. And some of them are drawn in to the extent that they are willing to be suicide bombers.
There has always been a Muslim presence in the black community. Many Africans are Muslims. And the US Black Muslims are a well-established organisation - their most illustrious member was Malcolm X.

There is a centre near where I live. Most Saturdays you can see smartly turned out Black Muslim males selling newspapers and preaching at my local shopping centre. But the Black Muslims have never preached holy war or suicide bombing. And the form of Islam that young men like Jermaine Lindsey are being drawn into is quite different from the US Black Muslims or the Muslim faith as practised in parts of Africa.

They have rejected the radical alternatives of a generation ago (such as the Pan-African movement). They do not choose to organise and pray with other black people within black-led churches. Instead, a form of Islam that has its origins in the Middle East and some of its most fervent adherents in the Indian sub-continent has them spellbound. And they are so enthralled that they are willing to die.

These young men obviously need something to believe in. And radical Islam gives them this. The terrorist threat in Britain is by no means defeated. And, even though they may only be a handful, I will not be surprised to see other young men of Caribbean origin involved.

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