Muslims in Ealing have hit out at The Sun newspaper after its front page suggested one in five British Muslims sympathised with jihadists.

On Monday (November 23) ran a front page story with the title "1 in 5 Brit Muslims' sympathy for jihadis" following an poll which asked: "How do you feel about young Muslims who leave the UK to join fighters in Syria?"

But the poll, which only surveyed 1,003 people by phone, has come under widespread scrutiny because it failed ask who they would be fighting for.

Managing director of Anti-Tribalism Movement, Adam Matan, whose organisation help Somalians in Ealing with everyday life, many of them Muslim, has branded the paper irresponsible.

"It should not only be Muslims who oppose this article it should be all of us"

The 28-year-old said: "I have been working with the Somali community over the last eight years and Ealing is one of the boroughs with the largest Somali community.

"In the last eight years I have never come across someone who sympathises with Al-Quada and Isis.

"Isis want to create this issue of 'us and them', and The Sun are feeding in to that, so we need a big debate on how the media portray the Muslim faith.

"It should not only be Muslims who oppose this article it should be all of us, because Isis wants to create a division in society."

Mr Matan added that he believed The Sun had got the "wrong end of the stick," because all Muslims he knew in Ealing find the actions of Isis to be adhorrent.

The front page story has so far received around 1,200 complaints to Independent Press Standards Organisation, a record number since IPSO began in September 2014.

Survation, the organisation who ran the survey before it was used by The Sun, defended the information as "broadly representative" but said they would be looking into public concern.

In a statement, the company said: "Whilst no poll can ever claim to be perfectly representative of the population being sampled, particularly so when sampling hard to reach demographics such as religious or ethnic groups, we believe that, despite criticism from some commercial rivals, the careful sampling and weighting used mean that this poll is broadly representative and meets acceptable methodological standards for media publication.

"We will, however, study the points raised to see if there are improvements that we can make in future work."

Dalawar Chaundry, a Muslim who was born in Ealing in 1966, claims the mood among Muslims and the public has been tense since the Paris attacks that claimed the lives of 130 people.

The manager of Chaudhry's TKC, a restaurant on The Broadway, Southall , said he was aware of friends and families who had been spat at and had eggs thrown at them following the Paris attacks.

Mr Chaundry believes it was "totally irresponsible" that The Sun would publish a front page story in light of these tensions.

He added: "It is totally irresponsible, they are not doing the community any justice and they are not doing what this country stands for any justice.

"They are going to feed the problem, they are going to create a storm."