London, England - In the midst of an afternoon drizzle in June, Ali Zafar, 19, was approached by several young men who nonchalantly mentioned that they were affiliated with the East London Youth Forum and were curious about his views on the war in Iraq.
To Mr. Zafar, it seemed like a strange solicitation, because the forum promoted itself as a community organization that sponsors paintball games and works with Muslims on social problems like drug abuse.
“They ask you about Iraq or Lebanon and then they go on about stuff like the caliphate and that things are not the way they should be,” he said. “When you are just walking home, they will tell you to come to a meeting, and that they will get you on the right path.”
Mr. Zafar said he shunned the youth forum. He has strong suspicions it is dominated by Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical Islamic group that preaches the establishment of a caliphate, or a pan-Islamic government, and the dismantling of Israel, but says it eschews violence. Hizb ut-Tahrir is banned in most Arab countries and in some European nations.
Like Mr. Zafar, there are Muslims who worry about the true ambitions of the youth forum, one in a constellation of such groups that operate around mosques and universities in Britain. These groups have drawn heightened attention after the arrests and charges this month in what the police say was a plot by Muslims, all of them British citizens, to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners.
“These groups are essentially Islamist cults, hidden communities, open only to ‘believers’ who exist within open communities,” said Anthony Glees, director of the Brunel University Center for Intelligence and Security Studies in London.
Mohammed Khodabocus, 29, a founding member of the youth forum, said he and other principals of the volunteer organization endorsed the tenets of Hizb ut-Tahrir. But he said the forum has no association with it, nor is his group political.
Organizations like the youth forum endear themselves to communities by arranging soccer and cricket tournaments, career fairs, tutoring programs and fund-raisers for Muslim causes abroad. They also offer social sounding boards on issues ranging from a recent rise in knife crime in parts of London to British foreign policy in the Middle East.
“They engage in social welfare projects, to tackle issues like Muslim underachievement in schools and to be seen as providing for people the way Western, godless governments cannot,” said Shiraz Maher, 25, who was a Hizb ut-Tahrir member in Leeds for two years until he left the group in early 2005.
“It gives them social legitimacy and a foothold in the community,” he said. “In some respects, they do a lot of good by helping to get people off drugs and things, but they radicalize them in other ways.”
Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain, along with successor groups to Al Muhajiroun, a London-based group that was ostensibly disbanded in Britain in 2004, and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, are engaged in some of the most aggressive activities to recruit followers, according to British terrorism experts.
Al Muhajiroun had been led by Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, a cleric who praised the Sept. 11 hijackers as “the magnificent 19.” He has been in exile in Lebanon since last year, when Britain barred him from returning to the country.
After the London bombings of July 7, 2005, Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed to outlaw Al Muhajiroun and Hizb ut-Tahrir, as part of a crackdown on groups that he said had spread intolerance and hate.
David Capitanchik, a terrorism authority and an honorary lecturer at Aberdeen University, said Hizb ut-Tahrir and Al Muhajiroun operated covertly through a shifting set of front groups with seemingly benign names.
They include the Debate Society, the Muslim Women’s Cultural Forum, the Islamic Society, the One Nation Society, the Millennium Society, the Pakistan Society and the 1924 Committee, according to Mr. Capitanchik and other experts.
“The point of the front groups is to appear more acceptable,’’ Mr. Capitanchik said. “But once people get a sense of what they are about, they disappear and reappear with different names and structures.”
Groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir say they are simply trying to raise consciousness and channel popular anger among Muslims about issues like the war in Iraq and the limited economic opportunities for them in Britain.
Taji Mustafa, a spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir, said that what radicalized people was not his group but “what they see on TV and read in newspapers about the actions of Western governments in the Muslim world.”
Mr. Mustafa also denied that the Islamic organization had any ties to the East London Youth Forum or used any front groups to spread its message.
But Hizb ut-Tahrir and the youth forum have worked together in the past. An Internet site listing Muslim events in Britain carried a notice last year that listed the youth forum and Hizb ut-Tahrir, along with a British cola company, as the main supporters of a dinner to raise money for victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami.
Catherine Hossain, a spokeswoman for the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, said her group was regarded as extremist because of its position on Israel. “We are unashamedly anti-Zionist,” she said.
Unlike Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Muslim Public Affairs Committee urges Muslims to take part in the British political system.
Mr. Maher, the former Hizb ut-Tahrir member, said university settings were particularly beneficial for radical groups, because they provided a platform for someone with extremist views to openly express them “without the social conservatism of the Muslim community.”
He explained that he broke with Hizb ut-Tahrir because he found the organization’s world view — including the group’s opposition to Muslims’ voting in Britain — too extreme and not viable. “I saw no conflict in being British and Muslim,” he said.
Mr. Maher said he was initially engaged by Hizb ut-Tahrir the way many other people are: outside of a mosque as he was leaving after Friday Prayer. It was about a year after the Sept. 11 attacks, and several people enticed him with the notion that the United States would start a war against Islam. “The mosques were not addressing this issue,’’ he said. “They were only condemning 9/11.”
Extremist literature and a tape made by Al Muhajiroun were found recently at a temporary prayer room used by the Islamic Society of London at Metropolitan University, according to a school official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing criminal inquiry into the airline bombing plot.
One of the suspects charged in the bombing plot case, Waheed Zaman, 22, was president of that religious society. A pamphlet, “The Reality of the Unknown Sect, Hizb ut-Tahrir,” has been circulated among Muslim students at British universities, and on the Internet, by opponents of the radical groups.
In East London, Hamzah Mahmood, 15, said that he had encounters with people linked with the youth forum, and that they had asked for his e-mail and home addresses. He said he declined. “They try to pump you up with football and paintball so they can get in your head,” he said.
Abu Khadeejah, a lecturer for the Salafi Institute in Birmingham, which endorses a purist strand of Islam, said it had used brochures, speeches and conferences to counter the radical thinking.
“We put the theological texts back in their proper place,” he said. “It shows that what these people are doing is beyond the pale.”