A British television documentary has revealed that Islamic extremist groups are exploiting high levels of crime among young Asian Muslims in the country's inner cities to find vulnerable recruits.

The investigation under Channel 4's Dispatches programme found that anti-Western fundamentalists were targeting communities affected by drug-dealing and violent crime.

They offer to clean up the area to gain support - a strategy often employed by the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland that carried out more than three decades of armed violence against British rule.

The programme - entitled Young, Angry and Muslim - warns that tackling alienation among young Muslims was a massive task, made all the harder by groups which seek to exploit it for their own ends.

Made by British Muslim presenter Navid Akhtar, who is of Pakistani descent, the documentary exposes the significant drugs problem among young Muslims, particularly Pakistani Kashmiris in inner cities who turn to narcotics to "combat their feelings of isolation".

According to the programme, Pakistani Kashmiris suffer from low educational achievement, high unemployment and involvement in crime and are "perfect targets for religious extremists who offer an alternative support network and sense of identity".

In areas rife with drug-fuelled crime, extremist groups offer themselves as an alternative to the police in cleaning up neighbourhoods.

A spokesman for Dispatches said: "With the drugs come gangs, violence and murder. In some areas, doubting the effectiveness of the police, Islamic radicals are permitted to enter the community to clean it up."

Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the mainstream Muslim Council of Britain, said: "The pattern of radical groups trying to offer young people a sense of belonging is certainly accurate.

"They tend to look for people who have no feeling of purpose and try to give them a purpose."

The Dispatches programme also highlights tensions surrounding the time honoured Pakistani clan system known as "Biraderi", whereby people look to family elders for guidance.

Many younger British Muslims, the programme claims, feel suffocated by the system and struggle to break free from its influence.