Bradford pop star Zayn Malik has flown back alone to the UK midway through his band One Direction’s tour of America after an attack by a right-wing talk show host and blogger who accused him of “pimping Islam” at his young female fans.

Debbie Schlussel warned US parents: “Keep your daughters away from Zayn Malik’s enticing jihad” as the band – formed two years ago when they reached the finals of X-Factor – toured the US, where they have become massive pop stars.

Schlussel describes herself as a “Conservative political commentator, radio talk show host, columnist, and attorney” and says her online “fan club” is the “internet’s second largest for a political personality” behind only neo-Conservative political commentator Ann Coulter.

She launched her attack on 19-year-old Zayn, whose parents Tricia and Yaser live with his sisters in East Bowling, on her blog, saying that although many people in the States have now heard of One Direction, “You probably don’t know that one of its members, Zayn Malik, is pimping Islam on your kids. That’s in addition to his Arabic tattoos and frequent donning of the keffiyeh, the official garb of Islamic terrorism.”

She goes on to write: “Malik, a devout British Muslim whose family is from Pakistan, has used social media to proselytize Islam to his primarily female fans around the world. He not only tweeted about fasting for Ramadan, but told fans that allah is the only god and that only Mohammed is G-d’s true prophet. Not the kind of thing you expect your kids to hear sandwiched in between cheesy, saccharin-sweet songs coming out of the mouths of over-moussed and over-gelled boy band tools.”

She accused X-Factor bosses of choosing Zayn for One Direction “specifically because he’s a P*** Muslim, to appeal to that rapidly growing demographic in the UK” and said of the former Tong High School teenager: “He’s no dummy. He knows the power he has over these mindless girls and is using that influence to preach the Islamic faith to them and try to convert them. It’s dangerous. And there’s a reason he tweeted that he didn’t have a girlfriend on the same day he tweeted Islamic preaching. Hey, if you convert to Islam, you can be my girltoy.”

Schlussel concludes: “Keep your daughters away from Zayn Malik’s enticing jihad. With the boy band One Direction, it’s all about pimping Islam amid the deceptive visage of angelic, effeminate boys in a band. Yup, for them there is definitely One Direction: facing Mecca.”

On Tuesday, as the blog reached international notice, Zayn flew back from Los Angeles to London alone, while the rest of the band remained in the States. It is not yet known whether Zayn’s return to Britain is related to the storm being whipped up by Schlussel.

By yesterday afternoon there were almost 1,000 comments on Schlussel’s blog, many of them deriding her for the attack on Zayn. We asked Simon Jones, co-founder of Hackford Jones PR company, which handles One Direction and other bands associated with Simon Cowell’s Syco management company, how Zayn was, but he replied: “We have no comment on this story I’m afraid.”

Zulfi Karim, of Bradford Council of Mosques, said that comments such as those from Schlussel “should be ignored” and not allowed to “fuel racial hatred”.

He said: “Speaking personally, I see Zayn as a role model for young people, an ambassador for Bradford and for Britain. His religious beliefs should be put to one side and they shouldn’t be used to stigmatise him – we shouldn’t let him be used to glorify extremist beliefs.

“What he’s doing is taking British pop music to America and being a real role model for young people - he’s a young Bradford lad doing well.”