More recently there have been reports of entire families leaving the town to join ISIS in Syria, including one of 12 with a one-year-old baby. What emerged, he continued, was a generation of young people going through an identity crisis with some becoming more western, going drinking and clubbing, and some becoming more insular and conservative. Aspen Woolf LTD. All rights reserved. In Bury Park, a small area of Luton, around a dozen mosques stand in a warren of terraced houses, vegetable stalls and south Asian fashion stores. Saphora Smith is a London-based reporter for NBC News Digital. Fistfights started breaking out between local Muslims and Choudary’s men when the Luton Central Mosque had to begin “physically removing” the extremists from its vicinity, he said. Luton was ranked as number four in the top 10 of best London commuter towns according to Yopa's London Commuter Guide 2020 earlier this year. And there’s no sign of this trend stopping any time soon – welcome news for investors looking for the best options for capital appreciation. They're very much mistaken," said Hanif Qadir, an anti-radicalization activist and himself a former extremist. That meant as much as £42,000 was added to the price of local properties. Thanks to the new transit system between the airport’s terminal and Luton Parkway rail station, journey times into central London from the terminal itself will be reduced to 30 minutes by 2020 – quicker than the journey times from Gatwick and Stansted! All of these factors mean Luton is now becoming a fast favourite of savvy property investors, offering a stable income, great capital growth, and a fantastic return on investment. In 2014, Rightmove and Oxford Economics predicted that prices in Luton would grow by 41% over the following five years. The English Defence League (EDL), formed in 2010, started targeting Muslims in Luton in what former leader Stephen Lennon described as a “tidal wave of patriotism. In 2010 Swedish student Taimour Abdulwahab blew himself up in central Stockholm after attending university in the town. Luton is home to 200,000 people, 50,000 of whom are Muslim — mainly of Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi heritage, according to 2011 census data. But given the difference in average rents in the respective areas, Luton still represents the cheaper option for many city workers. Bedfordshire is fortunate in that it is so close to the city making it one of the best places around for those needing to commute. Overall Luton was given a score of 66 out of 100 which is based on a number of factors. We use cookies to give you the best experience on our site. Even Luton Town Football Club is getting in on the action! Two decades ago, notorious and now-jailed extremist preacher Anjem Choudary planted roots here, recruiting young men who often felt alienated by far-right activists. “There was a pocket of difficult individuals that we knew about and we worked with the authorities to sort the problem” she said, adding “some grew out of it, while a significant number have been arrested and been imprisoned.”. At the same time, out-of-touch religious leaders failed to draw them back to the moderate mainstream, some locals say. However, this is set to change. ... Luton ￡265,575 ￡972 ￡359.00. But also Qadir stressed the effort had to come from all parts of society and not just from Muslims. These two major roads connect London, Leeds, and Manchester respectively, providing a vital link from the south of the country to the north.