LONDON (AFP) — A growing number of young Muslim women are becoming caught up in "violent extremism", the government warned Tuesday.
Ministers issued toned down advice in revised guidelines to universities after a previous version, issued in 2006, sparked outrage among some Muslim students who said they were being unfairly targeted.
The new guidance said that there was "no single profile" of potential radicals but added: "They are likely to be young -- generally younger than 30 -- and male, although the number of women who support and participate in violent extremism is increasing."
It warned that new and vulnerable students could be befriended by "extremist individuals...in order to create a culture of dependency and influence over them".
In November last year, the head of domestic intelligence service MI5, Jonathan Evans, said that Al-Qaeda was "grooming" young people to carry out attacks in Britain.
Britain, a key US ally in the fight against extremism since the September 2001 terror attacks, suffered its own attack in July 2005 when four suicide bombers killed 52 people and themselves on the London Underground.
Security services foiled two attempted attacks in London and Glasgow last June, shortly after Prime Minister Gordon Brown took office.
Releasing the new guidelines, Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell said universities faced a "serious but not widespread" threat from certain radical groups and said universities should promote openness and free debate.
This will "enable us to seek to convince via rational argument those who hold the sorts of extremist tendencies that are the enemies of rational argument," he added.
Faisal Hanjra, a spokesman for the Federation of Student Islamic Societies in the United Kingdom and Ireland, urged universities "to view the extremist threat in its correct context".
"There is no evidence to suggest that Muslim students at university are particularly vulnerable to radicalisation, nor is there any evidence to suggest that university campuses are hotbeds of extremist activity," he added.
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