Representatives of an east London mosque used by several of the terror suspects reacted angrily yesterday to what they called a “sick stunt” by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel.

Mohammed Shoyaib, the imam of the Musjid-e-Umer mosque in Walthamstow, complained that he and other elders were tricked by a representative from the cable channel, a priest who said he was working for the Vatican and wanted to talk peace.

“He introduced himself as priest working in Rome,” said Mr Shoyaib. “Then he said he was working for peace in the world, that all faiths should work together for peace, that he needs a united message of peace for the American people. Only later he said he was from ‘a sister network of Sky News’, but never mentioned Fox.”

The man spent several minutes conversing on camera with the imam and elders, but they reacted furiously when they learned he was Father Jonathan Morris, a religious pundit for Fox News.

On Thursday, in the aftermath of the arrests by anti-terrorist police, Mr Morris wrote on his Fox News blog:

“Today, officials have uncovered a major terrorist plot to blow up a group of planes on that same route. This is America and the world in 2006, and we are getting used to it. This time they got the bad guys, thank God. As we move forward as a country in these troubling times, our war must be first and foremost against the ideas that shape the hearts of the Muslim masses.”

Guardian, 14 August 2006

“When will the Muslims of Britain stand up to be counted? When will they declare, loud and clear, with no qualifications or quibbles about Britain’s foreign policy, that Islamic terrorism is WRONG?

“Most of all, when will the Muslim community in this country accept an absolute, undeniable, total truth: that Islamic terrorism is THEIR problem? THEY own it. And it is THEIR duty to face it and eradicate it. To stop the denial, endless fudging and constant wailing that somehow it is everyone else’s problem and, if Islamic terrorism exists at all, they are somehow the main victims. Because until that happens the problem will never be resolved. And there will be more 7/7s and, sometime in the future, another airplane plot will succeed with horrific loss of innocent life.

“Equally important, those British politicians who have seemed obsessed with pandering to, and even encouraging, this state of denial, must throw off their politically-correct blinkers and recognise the same truth – that Muslim terrorism in Britain is the direct responsibility of British Muslims.”

Former Metropolitan Police commissioner, Baron Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, offers some helpful advice to the Muslim community.

News of the World, 13 August 2006

Surely this forthright expression of “anti-dhimmitude” merits an accolade from Jihad Watch?

“Britain’s most senior Muslim police officer, the less than inspiring Tarique Ghaffur, this week blamed ‘Islamophobia’ for creating a ‘generation of angry young people’. That hardly squares with what we know about the suspects.

“Never mind that modern Britain has as good a record of tolerance as any country on Earth. Such anti-Islamic prejudice as does exist is confined almost exclusively to a social underclass of illiterate yobs. [Surely a little harsh on Nick Cohen? – ed.] Are we really to believe the suspects being held by the police were so tormented by Islamophobia in the Acacia Avenues of the Home Counties that they saw mass murder as the only response?

“No. Mr Ghaffur was right about only one thing in his speech to the National Black Police Association on Monday: young people who turn to terrorism tend to be psychologically vulnerable and open to exploitation by fanatics. The greatest threat to Britain’s security comes from that handful of bigoted imams who spew anti-Western poison from their mosques. They have been tolerated for too long.”

Daily Mail editorial, 12 August 2006