Muslims in Luton, where one teenager has won the right to wear her jilbab to school, fear racist attacks will increase. Martin Bright and Marijke Peters report.
Category Archives: State Oppression
Terror threat from ‘very many’ Muslim men, says Met chief
Terror threat from ‘very many’ Muslim men, says Met chief
By John Steele, Home Affairs Correspondent
Daily Telegraph, 4 March 2005
Britain faces a potential terrorist threat from “very many” Muslim men who returned to Britain after spending time in training camps in Afghanistan, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police said yesterday.
Sir Ian Blair, whose force, with MI5, leads anti-terrorism work in Britain, was asked if he supported the assertion of the Prime Minister earlier this week that there were “several hundred people in the UK plotting terror attacks”.
The commissioner told LBC radio in London: “Yes, I am aware of the fact that there are very many people who came back from the camps in Afghanistan and who are therefore potentially a threat to the United Kingdom.
“And I agree with the Prime Minister’s assessment, on that basis, that there are hundreds of people who came back from the camps and are now in the United Kingdom, and that is a very dangerous issue for us all.”
Scotland Yard sources made clear Sir Ian was referring to training camps run by al-Qa’eda and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which were destroyed in the military campaign by American and British forces after the attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001.
Police chief backs Blears over Muslim searches
The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has backed a minister’s controversial comments that Muslims should accept that they will be stopped and searched by police.
Hazel Blears, the Home Office minister, said on Tuesday that Muslims should accept as a “reality” that they would be targeted by police under the Government’s anti-terror measures. Yesterday Sir Ian Blair said he supported Ms Blears, and also supported the assessment of Tony Blair that that there were “hundreds” of people in Britain plotting to commit terrorist acts.
Asked if he agreed with Ms Blears’ comments, Sir Ian said: “I do actually: I think Hazel’s right to say it. The terrorism regulations around stop and search do not require individual suspicion, they are much more akin to searches around an airport.”
Rosie Kane MSP: Muslims targeted by anti-terror legislation
Motion from SSP to Scottish Parliament: “That the Parliament condemns the remarks of the Home Office minister, Hazel Blears.” … “believes that the targeting of Muslims by the security services will be done on a racist basis and abhors the fact that a Labour government elected with the support of substantial sections of Muslim communities should now be targeting those communities as if they were ‘the enemy within’.”
*S2M-2519 Rosie Kane: Muslims Targeted by Anti-Terror Legislation—That the Parliament condemns the remarks of the Home Office minister, Hazel Blears, to the Home Affairs Select Committee, and widely reported in the press, in relation to counter-terrorism powers that “some of our counter-terrorism powers will be disproportionately experienced by the Muslim community” and that “the threat is most likely to come from those people associated with an extreme form of Islam”; regards these remarks as directly associating our Muslim communities with terrorism; believes that they will be used by racists and far-right thugs as a green light to attack Muslims and will result in an increase in racist attacks; believes that the targeting of Muslims by the security services will be done on a racist basis and abhors the fact that a Labour government elected with the support of substantial sections of Muslim communities should now be targeting those communities as if they were “the enemy within”, and further notes that the last terrorist outrage committed in the United Kingdom was by a far-right racist against the lesbian and gay community.
Hazel Blears says police will target Muslim community
Muslims can expect the police to target them, minister says
By Richard Ford and Stewart Tendler
BRITAIN’S Counter-Terrorism Minister warned the Muslim community last night that it must face the reality of being targeted by the police because of the threat from an extreme form of Islam.
Hazel Blears provoked anger from Muslim leaders and the National Black Police Association (NPBA) for her “intemperate” comments. They said her statements could only exacerbate feelings among law-abiding Muslims that they were being unfairly targeted by police and intelligence services.
Ms Blears’s comments appear to conflict with the commitment by the police not to target suspects because of their race, a key recommendation of the 1999 inquiry by Sir William Macpherson into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager.
She said yesterday that Britain’s 1.5 million Muslims should accept as a reality that people of Islamic appearance are more likely to be stopped and searched.
“At the moment the threat is more likely to come from those associated with a most extreme form of Islam or who are falsely hiding behind Islam,” she told MPs.
“It means that some of our counter-terrorism powers will be disproportionately experienced by people in the Muslim community. There is no getting away from the fact.”
Ms Blears made her comments when she gave evidence to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into terrorism and the effects that counter-terrorism measures have on community relations.
She said later that because the current threat came from people masquerading as Islamists, police would have that in mind when using stop-and-search powers. “That is the reality. I do not think it should go unsaid.”
Muslims face increased stop and search
Hazel Blears, the minister responsible for counter-terrorism, said yesterday that Muslims will have to accept as a “reality” that they will be stopped and searched by the police more often than the rest of the public.
Ms Blears told MPs that “there was no getting away from it”, because the terrorist threat came from people “falsely hiding behind Islam”.
Her comments, on the day when leading British Muslim groups met to hammer out a strategy on maximising the Islamic vote for the election, provoked immediate condemnation from Islamic leaders.
Massoud Shadjareh, chair of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said: “She is demonising and alienating our community. It is a legitimisation for a backlash and for racists to have an onslaught on our community.”
See also “Muslim police stops ‘more likely'”, BBC News, 2 March 2005
Why Tariq Ramadan?
Firas Ahmed analyses Tariq Ramadan’s exclusion from the US and the role of Daniel Pipes.
IHRC condemns Hazel Blears’ Islamophobic politics of fear
“IHRC condemns in the strongest terms the dangerous comments made by Home Office minister Hazel Blears that Muslims should be ready to be disproportionately targeted by anti-terror laws. Ms Blears stated that since the terror threat facing Britain is coming from ‘people associated with Islam’, it was only right that Muslims should become disproportionate victims of stop and search and other anti-terror powers.”
Spain: Islam directly associated with terror
Another story directly equating Islam as a religion with terrorism. The Spanish government wants to introduce stricter controls over mosques and “democracy lessons” for imams.
The reality of l’affaire du foulard
The French hijab ban, now in place for almost a year, has both veiled the country’s social problems and unveiled its racism, Naima Bouteldja argues.