British Prime Minister Tony Blair called today for a hearts and minds struggle against the "evil ideology" of al Qaeda as the death toll from last week's London suicide bombings rose to 55.
Parents of one of bombers said he may have been brainwashed and appealed for new leads in a fast-moving investigation which has so far linked Britain, Egypt and Pakistan.
Pakistani security services detained two men overnight in the city of Lahore on suspicion of links with one of the four British Muslims who blew themselves up on July 7th on three London underground trains and a bus.
Blair called for a battle of ideas against what he called the fanatical beliefs and perversion of religion behind the London attacks and others around the world by the militant Islamist al Qaeda network.
He said the opponent was an "evil ideology" and a strain within Islam that was altogther removed from the "essential decency and truth" of that religion.
"It is not a clash of civilisations - all civilised people, Muslim or other, feel revulsion at it. But it is a global struggle. It is a battle of ideas and hearts and minds, both within Islam and outside it,"
Mr Blair said.
He said claims by militant Islamists to act in the cause of the Palestinian, Afghan or Iraqi people were belied by attacks in those countries in which innocent civilians were killed. "We should lay bare the almost devilish logic behind such manipulation," he said.
"Why, if it is the cause of Muslims that concerns them, do they kill so many with such callous indifference?"
He said such an ideology could only be beaten "by confronting it, symptoms and causes, head on".
As the death toll from Western Europe's first suicide bombings rose to 55, families of the attackers released statements expressing grief and disbelief.
"We are devastated that our son may have been brainwashed into carrying out such an atrocity, since we know him as a kind and caring member of our family," said the parents of Mohammad Sidique Khan.
"We urge people with the tiniest piece of information to come forward in order to expose these terror networks which target and groom our sons to carry out such evils." Khan, a primary school teaching assistant, was a 30-year-old married man with a daughter.
He had visited the British parliament last year and met a cabinet minister during a trip with his school. Three of the bombers were young British Muslims of Pakistani origin, while the fourth was a Jamaican-born Briton.