REPORT: British Muslim calls for action on jihadi subculture after beheading video

A senior British Muslim called on Thursday for action to tackle a jihadi sub-culture after an Islamic State video showed a suspected Briton beheading U.S. journalist James Foley held hostage in Syria.     

In Washington, Attorney General Eric Holder said the U.S. Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation into the death of Foley on the video, which featured a masked man  apparently speaking English with a British accent.      

Horror at the video spanned from the West to Baghdad, where  Iraqis asked why the United States and its allies had not cracked down on Islamic State fighters long before they captured large areas of Syria and Iraq.           

Foley, 40, was beheaded by an Islamic State militant in the video that surfaced on the Internet on Tuesday, and officials in Washington revealed that U.S. special forces had tried unsuccessfully to rescue him along with other American hostages earlier this summer.        

A firefight between the U.S. forces trying to rescue the hostages and Islamic State militants appeared to be the first direct ground engagement between the two sides.         

In Britain, the video caused particular shock as it featured the as yet unidentified man apparently speaking with a southeastern English accent, although the sizeable numbers of young British Muslims fighting with the militants in Iraq and Syria have created concern for some time.       

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, an adviser to the Muslim Council of Britain, said Britons from across the country's communities had to stop young men being seduced by radical ideologies.           

"This sub culture of this 'jihadi-cool' - as they call it in the media - within the margins of society ..., that is the real challenge," he told BBC Radio. "This is a problem that affects all of us and it will only be dealt with more effectively if all of us are working together on this."          

Sacranie said the Muslim community was pushing the message that "this is totally alien to Islam" and families were reporting to the authorities when they discovered their sons had headed to the Middle East to fight.           

British officials have also expressed concern that the young men will return home to plan attacks there. 

On Wednesday, officials said U.S. forces attempted to rescue journalist James Foley and other American hostages during a secret mission into Syria and exchanged gunfire with Islamic State militants only to discover the captives were not there.

The mission, authorized by President Barack Obama based on U.S. intelligence, took place earlier this summer. Officials disclosed the mission a day after a video surfaced showing a militant beheading the 40-year-old Foley.

Officials would not say exactly when the operation took place but said it was not in the past couple of weeks. U.S. special forces and other military personnel, backed up by helicopters and planes, dropped into the target zone in Syria and engaged in a firefight with Islamic State militants.

The incident, in which a number of militants were killed, appeared to be the first direct ground engagement between the United States and Islamic State militants, seen by Obama as a growing threat in the Middle East.

Lisa Monaco, Obama's top counter terrorism aide, said in a statement that Obama authorized the mission because it was his national security team's assessment that the hostages were in danger with each passing day.

"The U.S. government had what we believed was sufficient intelligence, and when the opportunity presented itself, the president authorized the Department of Defense to move aggressively to recover our citizens. Unfortunately, that mission was ultimately not successful because the hostages were not present," said Monaco.

The National Security Council said later on Wednesday it had never intended to disclose the operation.

"An overriding concern for the safety of the hostages and for operational security made it imperative that we preserve as much secrecy as possible," the NSC statement said. "We only went public today when it was clear a number of media outlets were preparing to report on the operation and that we would have no choice but to acknowledge it."