Independent Online Edition > This Britain : app2

No-hopers, a jihadi death cult. An aberration, an abomination, or a malignant growth soon to take over the mid-East?

Where is the outrage? Where is the shame?

Independent Online Edition > This Britain : app2: "Shahara Akther Islam was a lively 20-year-old, a devout Muslim with all her life before her
On Thursday, she had to attend a dentist's appointment before going to her job at the Co-operative Bank. So she said goodbye to her younger brother at their home in Plaistow, east London, and headed off on the Underground. It was a day like so many others. She never arrived.
By Maxine Frith and Elizabeth Davies
Published: 09 July 2005
And now this young woman, who so confidently straddled the twin cultures of her mosque and her city, is missing. She is feared dead, a victim of the horrific violence wreaked on London this week - almost certainly by the terrorists of al-Qa'ida, murdering and maiming in the name of her faith.
Her family fear Shahara was caught up in the explosion that wrecked the Circle line train just beyond Aldgate station at 8.51am on Thursday. The unbroken agony for her family, who spent much of yesterday like other families, desperately but vainly trawling hospitals for news of her, is that they do not yet know for sure. It seems an unspeakably cruel fate for them and for a young woman who could have been a poster girl for young British Muslims today.
Born in Whitechapel to a family who came to Britain in the 1960s from Bangladesh, Shahara has been going to the mosque every Friday with her close-knit family, but she also loves designer handbags, designer clothes and going out with her friends.
'She's one of those people who just makes friends wherever she goes,' said her uncle, Nazmul Hasan, who is helping in the search for her.
'She doesn't think that much about politics - she likes hanging out with her friends, talking and laughing a lot. We just want to bring her home - whether that means she's one of the fatalities or not, we "