LONDON — Naweed Hussain sat in his little real estate office Friday, trying to focus on spreadsheets instead of the angry clatter outside. Furious young Muslim men crowded around the local mosque on his street surrounded by television cameras. They complained that their friends, other young Muslim men from Walthamstow, in East London, had been unfairly accused of plotting to blow up airliners. Police guarded the home of one suspect in what authorities call a plot to kill people on an ‘unimaginable’ scale, allegedly planned right here in Hussain’s working-class neighborhood. ‘Why is it not happening in some other country?’ wondered Hussain, 53, a soft-spoken man in a tie and black-rimmed glasses who has lived here since he migrated from Pakistan 40 years ago. ‘Why is it happening here?’ The answer is that Britain has become an incubator for violent Islamic extremism, fueled by disenchantment at home and growing rage about events abroad, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Four bombers killed themselves and 52 others in attacks on the London public transit system on July 7, 2005 , followed by an almost identical but failed attack two weeks later. Last month Metropolitan Police Commissioner […]

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