BIRMINGHAM — Outside the Maasha’Allah Internet cafe, Mr Mohammed Hussain raised his voice over the recorded Quranic verses blaring from the abaya shop two doors down. He was furious that Britain’s latest terrorist attacker had amplified his city’s stigma.

“Why do all the jihadis come to Birmingham?” He half-shouted, prompting a passing group of teenage girls in bright coloured headscarves to frown, then giggle.

Exaggeration or not, many people are asking that question. Khalid Masood, 52, the Briton responsible for the deadly attack outside Parliament last week, remains a puzzle to investigators working on how, why, and when he was radicalised.

But one aspect is familiar: He had a connection to Birmingham, having moved almost a year ago to this city of 1.1 million, where more than 1 in 5 residents declare Islam as their religion.

As if to further punctuate the connection, the police announced on Sunday (Mar 26) that they had arrested an unidentified man in Birmingham as part of the investigation of Masood.

Members of Birmingham’s Muslim communities acknowledged the linkage between their city and Islamist extremism, which many attribute to poverty and drug abuse that make youths vulnerable to jihadi recruiters who operate like gangs. But the city’s Muslims also deeply resent what they see as a grossly unfair reputation, countering that most residents are proud and law-abiding.

Many also see their neighborhoods as reassuring refuges from the backlash of anti-Islam bigotry roiling Europe and elsewhere.

The bigotry has often focused on Birmingham. A few years ago, a Fox News terrorism commentator had to apologise for describing Birmingham as a “Muslim-only city” where non-Muslims “don’t go”.

Nonetheless, Birmingham, Britain’s second-biggest city behind London, has produced a disproportionate number of convicted Islamist militants, including some linked to the Sept 11 attacks, and to last year’s bombings in Brussels.

So many Islamist militants have either been born in Birmingham – or have passed through – that the Birmingham Mail newspaper once lamented that the city had the dubious distinction of “Terror Central”.

“The extremist schools of thought seem to have become more embedded in Birmingham than in other parts of the country,” said Mr Nazir Afzal, the former chief crown prosecutor for north-west England, who is from Birmingham.

Masood, who converted to Islam in his late 30s, was born and raised in an affluent village in south-east England. He spent much of his adulthood in and around London, interrupted by jail time and two year-long relocations to Saudi Arabia. But Birmingham was his last residence.

Birmingham was the birthplace of Britain’s first suicide bomber, the residence of a financier of 9/11, and the place where al-Qaeda hatched a plot to blow up a commercial airliner in 2006.

When a masked member of al-Shabab, the Somali extremist group, celebrated the murder of soldier Lee Rigby in a 2013 video, he listed Birmingham as the first source of its fighters.

The man who is believed to have recruited the militant known as Jihadi John, the Islamic State executioner with the King’s English accent, was from Birmingham, as was his closest associate.

Other prominent militants who have come through the city’s underground networks include Abdelhamid Abaaoud, organizer of the 2015 Paris attacks, and Mohamed Abrini, a Belgian national who helped plot the 2016 Brussels attacks.

In 2014, Birmingham was at the center of a so-called “Trojan Horse” plot in which, it was alleged, a group of Islamist extremists had sought to infiltrate and take over two dozen state schools.

A recent report by the Henry Jackson Society, a politically conservative think-tank, found that 1 in 10 convicted Islamist militants in Britain come from five Birmingham neighborhoods.

Mr David Videcette, a former senior counter-terrorism official, said that Birmingham had a better established extremist network than London – a city of 7 million – which helped to explain why, in his view, many investigations lead “back to Birmingham”.

Part of Birmingham’s allure to prospective militants is its diverse sprawl of Muslim neighborhoods where they can blend in easily, local activists said.

“It’s a hiding place or a passing place to do what they want to do, and keep a low profile,” said Mr Mohammed Ashfaq, director of Kikit, a community organisation that helps young people who are drawn to drugs and extremist ideology.

If a militant were to hide, for example, in Birmingham’s Muslim neighborhood of Sparkbrook, Mr Ashfaq said, “no one looks at them twice.”

Birmingham is also much poorer than London, providing a more exploitable population for extremists, Mr Ashfaq added, recalling how his organisation dissuaded two youngsters from joining the Islamic State. Both were drug addicts.

“A lot of kids are on drugs, or from single-parent families, or who experience domestic violence,” Mr Ashfaq noted. NEW YORK TIMES