CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: NEW DELHI AND LONDON - When President George Bush visited this country of 150 million Muslims last year, he introduced his wife to the prime minister with a fact surely intended to amaze: "Not one Indian Muslim has joined Al Qaeda," he said.
At a time when Muslim nations from Algeria to Indonesia have emerged as incubators for anti-Western extremists, India – by some estimates the world's second-most-populous Muslim nation – has remained a unique case.
Yet reports from Britain suggest that, for the first time, an Indian Muslim is likely to be implicated in an act of international terrorism. Khafeel Ahmed, the man who police say crashed a Jeep into Glasgow's airport on June 30, is an engineer from Bangalore, a city previously known only as the high-tech capital of the new India.
Until now, Indians' disinterest in the global jihad had been largely taken for granted, experts say. In recent days, however, the nation has been left to try to piece together why a man who holds a PhD in aeronautics from India's golden city was driven to such rage against the West – and whether there will be more to follow. Global terror’s India connection: The Glasgow attack is the first known act of global terror involving an Indian Muslim (more) By Mark Sappenfield & Mark Rice-Oxley
Mark Alexander
