Shahara Islam – the face of London’s lost

Published: Sunday, 10 July, 2005, 01:16 PM Doha Time
By Robin Millard
PRETTY, London born and bred, and Muslim: 20-year-old Shahara Islam has become the face of London’s lost.
At least 50 people were killed and 700 injured in Thursday’s bomb attacks on London transport, and Islam’s family are desperate to know if she was one of them.
The devout Muslim, whose beaming face adorns the front pages of Britain’s national newspapers, took the underground railway to her job in a central London bank as usual on Thursday morning.
She never made it, and nobody has seen or heard from the young woman since.
The smiling young woman, pictured in a pale blue scarf and top, embodies, it seems, the callous attack’s victims: Londoners, Muslims, daughters, ordinary people off to work, the happy face of the cosmopolitan city.
“It seems an unspeakably cruel fate for a young woman who could have been a poster girl for British Muslims today,” the Independent newspaper said yesterday. “Shahara embodies as much as anyone multicultural Britain and the way in which younger generations of Muslims are embracing both their own and Western cultures.”
Killed “almost certainly by the terrorists of Al Qaeda, murdering and maiming in the name of her faith”.
The slaughter of a young British Muslim woman would provide “proof” for the British public that the unseen enemy is indiscriminate in its violence but additionally show that the killers are not just targeting the non-Muslim majority.
The Sun tabloid printed her picture on its front page alongside one of Laura Webb, 29, who also left for work on Thursday and never arrived.
“Two beautiful, decent women. One Christian. One Muslim. Both missing with dozens more. Pray for them all,” Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper urged.
Her parents came to Britain from Bangladesh in 1960, and now her family are scouring hospitals across London to find her.
Her uncle Nazmul Hasan was desperately seeking information at the Royal London Hospital.
He was scathing about the bombers who have almost certainly robbed him of his niece.
“If there was a word to describe them, I would use it. These people are not Muslims. They have inflicted this on everyone in London and in Britain, including Muslims.” – AFP

URL: http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=43891&version=1&template_id=38&parent_id=20