By PATRICK FRENCH

Last updated at 14:04 11 November 2007

Don't you hate Islamic Rage Boy? 'MoBlows', writing on the Jihad Watch website, certainly does.

"I just want to put my fist down his throat," he says. The 'boy' in question rose to prominence earlier this year when he was photographed at a demonstration in Srinagar, capital of Indian-administered Kashmir.

Later, he was spotted waving his fist at another camera during a protest against the awarding of a knighthood to author Salman Rushdie.

With his straggly beard and big shouting mouth, Rage Boy certainly looks like a threat.

His scary face now appears on boxer shorts and bumper stickers, and he scores more than a million results on Google.

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A regular spoof diary appears online in his name and he has come to stand for all that is most frightening about radical Islam.

But who is the real person behind the cartoon and what does he believe in? I travelled to Kashmir in search of the poster-boy of fundamentalism.

Islamist extremism is rarely out of the news these days. It showed its most inhuman side last week when a Taliban suicide bomber killed politicians and a group of schoolgirls in an attack in Afghanistan.

In Pakistan, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto said the bomb that blew up her homecoming convoy, killing 140 people, may have been strapped to a child dressed in her party colours who was handed up to her vehicle moments before the blast.

In London, MI5 chief Jonathan Evans suggested British children as young as 15 were being recruited by Al Qaeda to launch a campaign of devastation against their own country.

In the wake of the attacks on America in 2001, some Muslims around the world were inspired by Osama Bin Laden's spectacular nihilist philosophy.

His death cult, born of the collision between the harsh religious tradition of the Arabian Desert and the rush of new Saudi oil money, holds that all non-believers are fair game in a war fought for the imposition of universal Muslim rule and the restoration of the Caliphate.

Islamist terrorism – the reason given by General Musharraf for declaring martial law in Pakistan last weekend – has spread its tentacles wide, leaving people and governments frightened about how best to respond.

If anyone embodies the violent potency of this threat, it is Islamic Rage Boy. Over the past few months he has become as much of a hate figure as Bin Laden.

Journalist Christopher Hitchens calls him a "religious nut bag" full of "yells and gibberings", and says that he refuses to live his own life "at the pleasure of Rage Boy".

On Jihad Watch, which says its aim is to bring public notice to the role that jihad theology and ideology play

in the modern world, 'The Goobs' writes: "Can you IMAGINE how nasty it would smell standing next to this nutter? Whatcha wanna bet he hasn't ever owned a can of Right Guard?"

'Johndoe' thinks "Rage Boy will never rise from the madness that enslaves him. Never. He is past the point of no return – irredeemable like millions of his fellow psychotics."

Many other internet postings about Rage Boy are so revolting that they cannot be published in a family newspaper.

Bloggers decided he was the embodiment of all they feared and despised in radical Islam.

An American website claims to have copyrighted the "ferocious likeness" of this "curry-drenched ass-pirate", and offers Rage Boy merchandise: his irate face appears on clocks, beer mugs, thongs, T-shirts. The website says if you use his image without permission, you risk being 'buried up to your neck in the Afghani desert".

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An intelligence officer at the Ministry of Defence in London told me he drinks his coffee from an Islamic Rage Boy mug.

Rage Boy has been portrayed as Adolf Hitler, and appeared on a spoof cover of Time magazine as Man Of The Year.

A popular bumper sticker in the United States features his angry scowl beside the slogan: "Honk if you love the tender embrace of a mountain goat on a chilly, star-filled evening."

With Islamic Rage Boy's features morphing into innumerable spin-offs, does he deserve the loathing he excites and is he making a fortune out of his merchandise and notoriety?

It was my first visit to the disputed Indian state of Kashmir for more than 20 years. As a teenage backpacker, I remember spending long days lying in the sun on a houseboat on Dal Lake and trekking in the mountains. Then the place was full of hippies and tourists, but they have long since fled.

Kashmir is spectacularly beautiful, with high lakes and streams, almond and apple orchards, and breathtaking views across the deodar forests that descend from mountain ranges.

But since the start of the anti-Indian insurgency in the late Eighties, it has become a place of bloodshed. When India became independent and Pakistan was created in 1947, the Kashmir valley became a part of

India despite having a large Muslim majority – a decision that was to have fatal historical reverberations.

Arriving at Srinagar airport, I got a taste of what was to come: sand-bags, fortified arches draped with camouflage netting, pill-box bunkers, armoured vehicles with gun barrels poking out of their turrets, roads lined with razor wire. Indian paramilitary police in helmets and metal breastplates manned frequent checkpoints.

I soon realised that my mobile phone was not working: all foreign phones are jammed as a security measure.

Although Kashmir is calmer than it has been for years, it felt like a war zone.

Conscious that I was the only foreigner in town, I linked up with a local reporter, Peerzada Arshad Hamid, who took me to what he called 'the Gaza Strip of Kashmir'.

We went to Malik Angan, a poor area that the security forces monitor closely, though they risk being shot at or stoned.

As we arrived, paramilitary policemen were searching a cloth vendor, making him dismantle his cart.

Arriving at a simple, traditional three-storey Kashmiri house, I was taken up steep wooden steps by the light of a gas lamp to the top of the building. There, standing in an empty room, dressed in a salwar kameez and zip-up cardigan, with crooked teeth and a quizzical look on his face, was Islamic Rage Boy.

Shakeel Ahmad Bhat is a 29-year-old failed militant. Over two days, sitting cross-legged at the home he shares with his mother and smiling shyly much of the time, Shakeel told me, through an interpreter, his life story and why he had come to wave his fists at the cameras.

His story was not what I had expected and showed the personal torment of life in a society that has gone wrong. Although it is hard to prove the authenticity of his story, given my knowledge of Kashmiri political history over the past 20 years, everything he told me sounded plausible: after all, what reason would he have to lie?

Shakeel's religious family followed the Sufi tradition, a mystical and tolerant form of Islam that is common in Kashmir. His father would often take him to mosques and taught him two lessons: do not be greedy and help Islam to spread by peaceful means.

Shakeel did not like school and he had difficulty learning to read and write. His teacher thrashed him with a stick but it did not improve his studies. Aged ten, he refused to go to class and stayed at home with his family.

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At this time, in response to rigged elections, Pakistani-backed terrorist activity against Indian rule in Kashmir was beginning. The Indian government's reaction was brutal. While searching for militants, police raided Shakeel's home and threw his 18-year-old sister Shareefa out of an upstairs window. She broke her spine and died from her injuries four years later.

In the early Nineties, thousands of young Kashmiris streamed over the border to Pakistan to take up arms against India. Shakeel, just 13, decided to join them. He was so small he had to be carried on an older boy's shoulders when he went up to the mountains.

In Muzaffarabad he was taken to a snow-covered training camp run by the Pakistani army in conjunction with the militant group Al-Umar Mujahideen. Armed with an AK-47, he returned to Srinagar hoping to drive out the Indian army.

"I thought Kashmir should have the right to self-determination," he told me.

Shakeel was not a very good militant. When I asked him how many people he had killed, he looked embarrassed.

"I gave scares but I never killed anyone," he said. "I couldn't. I never hurled a grenade in a public place."

His greatest achievement was opening fire on the cavalcade of a visiting Indian government minister.

Even when his team caught a police informant, Shakeel called for him to be set free. "I thought I would set an example. Forgiveness is better than killing."

In 1994, when he was 16, he was arrested and taken to a military barracks. Of the 20 boys and young men who had crossed the border to Pakistan with him, only eight were still alive.

Shakeel was tortured. He was stripped, doused with water and given electric shocks. A nail was pushed through his jaw (he showed me the scar). His head was immersed in water.

When he was released, he remained under police surveillance. An injury to his right arm as a result of the torture had left him unable to lift anything and he has relied on his brothers to support him since then. Shakeel is still unemployed and says he feels as if he is 110 years old.

Not long after his release, the paramilitary Special Task Force came to the house to look for Shakeel but he was not there. They beat his 75-year-old father instead, leaving him with a broken leg; he spent the rest of his life bedridden.

While we were talking, one of Shakeel's brothers brought in a pot of sweet tea and a plate of cakes. Since there was no furniture in the room, he spread out a plastic tablecloth on the floor and served me tea. It was evening by now, and the Kashmiri night was going to be cold. The brother brought in a rug and spread it over my legs.

Shakeel's understanding of the world is limited by his inability to read or write. He likes going to demonstrations and has an ambition to start a political party.

"But not to be the puppet of Pakistan or India," he insisted.

He sometimes watches Al Jazeera English on television and although he cannot comprehend much of what

is said, he told me he can work out what is going on from the images on screen and from what his brothers have told him.

If something upsets him, he organises a demonstration.

He seems to be quite an idealist.

He has demonstrated against the Pope's comments about Islam, against the sexual exploitation of Kashmiri girls, against police violence and 'encounter' killings and against the honouring of Rushdie. Why did he object to Rushdie being knighted?

"He has a reputation for Muslim-bashing," he said solemnly. "Why is the London government encouraging someone who does these things?"

To my surprise, Shakeel seemed to have no time for Bin Laden, although he does not believe he was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

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"I heard that planes had crashed into the Twin Towers. I thought it was very bad that so many civilians had been killed. But afterwards I was told it was America's own government that had arranged the attack."

How could that have happened? "Money can make wonders."

But why would America have wanted to do such a thing?

"There is a strong lobby in the USA that opposes President Bush. He wanted to attack Afghanistan and

Iraq. He had to justify that to his own people."

Then I asked if he had heard about the 7/7 bombings in London. "I heard that an Underground train was bombed. It pains me when innocents are killed. It pains me."

When the Islamic Rage Boy phenomenon took off and Shakeel had his face reproduced all over the world, the local police got worried and brought him in for questioning.

"They had photocopies from the internet which they showed to me."

They told Shakeel to stop going on demonstrations but he refused.

He says he was brought before one of Srinagar's most senior police officers, who offered him an administrative job in the government, and said he would find him a girl to marry. I believe him – Indian authorities have a habit of trying to rehabilitate militants who are no longer an obvious threat.

"They said they would drop all the cases against me if I quit going to demos." He refused.

I suggested to Shakeel that he must have been tempted by the prospect of a job and a wife – he was unlikely ever to get such a good opportunity again. He looked shy and covered his face with his hands.

"I want to marry a non-Muslim woman and convert her to Islam."

Why? I asked.

In a moment that might have come straight out of the Borat film, he answered in a soft, serious voice: "I have been told that if I can convince a non-Muslim woman to marry me – but not convert her by force – then there will be a place for me in heaven."

I suggested there might be some suitable candidates in Britain. "If the offer comes," Shakeel said, "I am ready to accept it."

Did he ever use the internet? "I don't have knowledge of it. I cannot go to the internet shops and spend 30 rupees an hour.

I never board a bus, I walk to the city centre if I am going to a protest. I don't smoke and I don't take tea from tea stalls. If I need some money, I have to ask my brothers to give it to me."

Since he is unable to read properly, I had presumed that Shakeel would have a limited idea of the extent of his internet fame. But he showed me a pair of folders.

Some friends had trawled through different sites and printed off computer-altered pictures of him.

Shakeel leafed through the pages: Islamic Rage Boy on clothes, being force-fed a pork chop, as a vampire, as a beer bottle, as a woman in a bikini, as 'Jihady Idol', as 'Adolf Mohammed Rage Boy', distended and jabbing his finger at a photographer above a quote from Christopher Hitchens: "It's impossible to satisfy Rage Boy and his ilk. It's stupid to try."

One picture showed what looked like an American preacher holding a microphone while wearing a Rage Boy baseball cap. Shakeel stopped on an image of his face superimposed on a pig.

He looked profoundly shocked and upset by this picture. What did he feel?

"I surely get hurt when I see these pictures," he said. "This is terrorism for me. The people who do this are showing their own culture, so why do they tell us that we are uncivilised?'

I asked what would stop him protesting. What would satisfy him? "If peace were to prevail in the entire world and people would understand the message of the Koran. You can't bring peace by beating the drums or killing people," he replied.

Shakeel is a one-off, an eccentric, but he may be more representative of Muslim anger around the world than we like to admit, whether in Ramallah, Srinagar or Chechnya.

He doesn't understand us, and we don't understand him. Our assumption that any form of unrest or protest by Muslims must be connected to the Al Qaeda cause is plainly wrong.

In fact, Osama Bin Laden has hijacked Islam from the vast majority of the world's Muslims.

Shakeel Ahmad Bhat is the product of poverty, lack of opportunity and state brutality. Islam is to him a way of life. He is illiterate and his only source of news is the street.

Surrounded by other people who lack knowledge of the outside world, is it any surprise that he believes barmy conspiracy theories about the attacks of 9/11?

Islamist extremism is a serious threat and will continue. But Al Qaeda's brand of terrorism has little in common with Shakeel's upbringing or experience.

The Sufi traditions of the Kashmir valley are a thousand miles away from the Salafism of Egypt and Saudi Arabia that gave rise to Bin Laden's thinking.

Shakeel became a not very successful militant because he thought Kashmir deserved self-rule and his sister had been thrown out of a window.

Al Qaeda believes the only pure form of Islam was that practised by the Prophet and his followers many centuries ago. It uses the tools of modernity – TV, planes, plastic explosives, the internet – to try to destroy modernity.

The terrorist threat we face in Britain comes from the spread of Al Qaeda ideology, combined with the failed

multicultural project that led successive governments to refuse to promote the active integration of immigrant

communities.

This calculated lack of loyalty led directly to the obscenity of the 7/7 bombings, when men who were born and bred in England blew up themselves and their fellow citizens, since their only allegiance was to a synthetic external identity.

That is true rage.

Patrick French is the author of Liberty Or Death: India's Journey To Independence And Division, published by Flamingo.