Fear lingers for Muslims relieved that suspects are not British

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Charlene Sweeney reports for The Times on fears of an anti-Muslim backlash in Scotland.

Fear lingers for Muslims relieved that suspects are not British

By Charlene Sweeney

The Times, 3 July 2007

On the streets of the Pollokshields suburb of Glasgow, home to Scotland’s largest Muslim population, there was a palpable sense of relief yesterday that the suspects being held in police custody for the terror attacks at Glasgow Airport and London were foreign nationals.

But there was also a lingering fear that the community would suffer reprisals simply for having brown skins.

Robina Chaudry, 39, a retail assistant who lives in the area, said: “I saw the bombings on TV and I feel really upset by it. White people looked down on Asians after the London bombings and I worry it will happen again. My kids go on the Underground every day and I fear for their safety.”

One retired man, who did not wish to be named, said that he had not heard of any backlash so far, but cautioned that the attacks could be used as an excuse for racism. “If these terrorists had been born or brought up in Scotland it might be different, but they don’t belong to our Asian community,” he said. “I think people will be tolerant – the Scots are in general – but there are fanatics in every society.”

Zeeshan Muhammed, 17, a pupil at Shawlands Academy who last month attended the country’s first Young Scottish Muslims conference, said that relations between Asians and other communities were in general good. However he admitted that last week’s terror threats could “change things”.

He said that he has already been the subject of taunts because of his faith.

“At school sometimes when I wear a [Muslim] cap they say, ‘Oh look, here’s Osama coming.’ Some are joking but others are serious.”

Across the wider Scottish Muslim community, faith leaders who feared racial tensions were encouraged by the news that the suspects were not British.

Bashir Maan, Scottish representative for the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “The community was very tense to begin with but since the new developments, that the attackers were foreign nationals, there is some relief – and also some hope – that things will not get as bad.”

But Osama Saeed, Scottish spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, argued that the backlash that followed the 9/11 atrocity in New York and the 7/7 suicide bombings in London was also possible in Scotland.

“Muslims are victims of these atrocities too and what makes it even more galling is that we’re also at the centre of a storm where everyone is pointing the finger of suspicion at us,” he said.

Fascists defend ‘enlightened forms of social governance’

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“Islam is at odds with everything we in the west stand for. It is diametrically opposed to our enlightened forms of social governance, democracy, free thinking, scientific enquiry and common justice. The BNP remains the only political party which stands firm, speaks the truth and says that there is no place for Islam in Britain.”

BNP news article, 3 July 2007

“Enlightened forms of social governance, democracy, free thinking”? To quote Nick Griffin’s sidekick Mark Collett:

“National Socialism was the best solution for German people in the 1930s…. When people say ‘Do you take any inspiration from that?’, I mean, I honestly can’t understand how a man who’s seen the inner city hell of Britain today can’t look back on that era with a certain nostalgia and think, yeah, those people marching through the streets and all those happy people out in the streets, you know, saluting and everything, was a bad thing.”

Backlash fears as Asian newsagent is firebombed in Glasgow

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Glasgow shop fireFears of a backlash against Muslims are rising tonight in the wake of the car bomb plot. It came as a Pakistani-born Scotsman’s newsagents was ram-raided and fire-bombed in Glasgow. Racial incidents rose in the days after the July 7 bombings and there was a similar backlash after the September 11 attack.

Tonight a prominent Muslim leader spoke of his fears of a “rising hostility” towards the Asian community. Osama Saeed, the Muslim Association of Britain’s Scottish spokesman, made the warning as police launched an investigation into the attack on a newsagent’s in the early hours of the morning.

In a chilling echo of the attack at Glasgow Airport on Saturday, a car was reversed at speed into the shop, crashing through metal shutters before the driver apparently dosed it with petrol and set it alight. As he fled – in a second vehicle with waiting driver – explosions ripped through the shop causing a massive fire.

Mr Saeed said: “This incident sounds very much like it is some sort of copycat crime, which is extraordinary because someone would have gone to the trouble of premeditating that attack. It is not an emotional reaction. They’ve waited, they’ve got the car and the materials. It suggests there is a rising feeling of hostility where people feel comfortable in the company of others acting in a grotesque fashion.”

On Monday, fire bombers attacked what they thought was the rear of the Islamic Centre, in Bathgate, West Lothian. But they mistakenly damaged an adjacent estate agency.

Speaking of his fears of a backlash Mr Saeed said: “In some ways it was expected as there was a backlash after September 11 and 7/7. But we have got to stress to people we are in this together and we are all in the same boat. We have all been victims.”

Daily Mail, 3 July 2007

Brown denies Iraq terror link

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Brown denies Iraq terror linkPrime Minister Gordon Brown claimed on Sunday that British foreign policy had nothing to do with the latest attempted terror attacks. In an echo of his predecessor Tony Blair, Mr Brown claimed that this weekend’s shambolic bomb plots were the work of phantom menace terror group al-Qaida.

He claimed that the would-be bombers were not motivated by the carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan but had “a grievance against society, particularly against the values that we represent and the values decent people of all religions represent”.

“Irrespective of Iraq, irrespective of Afghanistan, irrespective of what is happening in different parts of the world, we have an international organisation trying to inflict the maximum damage on civilian life in pursuit of a terrorist cause that is totally unacceptable to most people,” he declared.

Identifying the bomb plot with Islam and British Muslims, Mr Brown said: “We have got to fight a battle for hearts and minds. We have got to separate those moderate members of our community from a few extremists who wish to practise violence and inflict maximum loss of life in the interests of a perversion of their religion.”

But Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German said: “The government is in denial on this question. Even a government inquiry last year found that the growth of terrorism in Britain was due to the war in Iraq. There is one simple fact – before the Iraq war, Britain was not under threat from terrorism and now it is. What Britain needs is not more terror laws but a change in foreign policy.”

Morning Star, 2 July 2007

Posted in UK

Police vow to clamp down on anti-Muslim backlash

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Glasgow car bombPolice chiefs and senior politicians moved to reassure Scotland’s Muslim communities yesterday amid fears of a backlash after the terrorist incident at Glasgow airport.

As police waited to question the two men arrested after the failed car bomb attack, the justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, said neither was “born and bred” in Scotland. “Any suggestion to be made that they are homegrown terrorists is not true,” he said. Police said two minor incidents of racist abuse had been reported since the attacks but promised to clamp down on any backlash.

Mohammad Sarwar, the Labour MP for Glasgow Central, said constituents had been threatened since the incident. But he said there was no evidence that any of Scotland’s imams or mosques had been fomenting hatred. “The message is moderate and liberal,” he said. “Glasgow airport is used by a vast majority of Muslims and people of all faiths. This attack was an attack on all of us, on our city and our communities.”

Osama Saeed, Scottish spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, said there had “not been a peep of extremism” in Scotland to date, adding: “You hear about individuals and groups in London and elsewhere in England, but there has been no presence of this here.”

Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, also said the attack was out of character. “Scottish society is very strong, with a strong sense of community,” he said. “In Scotland, the Muslim community is part of the fabric of society, and is hugely important for social life, and this community link will remain strong.”

Guardian, 2 July 2007

See also Daily Record, 2 July 2007

And Osama Saeed’s comments at Rolled Up Trousers, 1 July 2007

Muslim groups ‘appalled by sinister plot’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Community leaders were yesterday quick to condemn the terror attacks in Glasgow and London, while politicians played down fears of a backlash against British Muslims.

MPs, Muslim organisations and police chiefs were universal in their condemnation of events and emphasised the moderation of the vast majority of British Muslims. Mohammad Sarwar, the MP for Glasgow Central, led calls to condemn extremists who “brainwash” British-born Muslims, adding the Glasgow outrage had come as a major shock in a country in which mosques preach a moderate message.

He said: “This is a big surprise … we were not expecting this type of incident in Scotland. This is the first incident that has happened in Glasgow and everybody is shocked and terrified.”

Campaigners from the British Muslim Initiative issued a statement damning the incidents. A spokesman said: “We urge all British Muslims to fully co-operate with the authorities to apprehend and bring to justice the perpetrators.” The organisation’s president Muhammad Sawalha added: “We are utterly appalled by this sinister plot and commend the professionalism of the security services in aborting it.”

Osama Saeed, Scottish spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, said: “Terrorists do not care who they kill. We are seething with anger about this.”

Independent, 2 July 2007

See also “MCB condemnation with The Three Faiths Forum”, Muslim Council of Britain press release, 2 July 2007

The media and the bombings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Car bomber is British doctorThe media coverage of the botched terrorist attacks in London and Scotland has been much as you might expect.

Yesterday we had BBC News 24 reporting that the police had stated that none of the suspects was of British origin – and then broadcasting a piece suggesting that the attacks had been carried out by young British Muslims who had been radicalised by the internet and then travelled to Pakistan to be trained as terrorists.

And nobody seems to have picked up on the contradiction of claiming that the attacks were carried out or inspired by Al Qaida, while at the same time reporting that the individual arrested in connection with the attack is a doctor of Iranian origin, and therefore presumably a Shia. [Update: Dr Mohammed Asha is in fact Jordanian. But how could we expect the Sun to tell the difference?]

Needless to say, right-wing (and liberal) commentators have been eager to pin responsibility on the Muslim community for failing to stop the bombers – who for all we know may in fact have had no connection with any section of the UK Muslim community. An article by Philip Johnston in the Telegraph carries the headline “We need Muslims to do more”, while the London Evening Standard goes with “Muslims must reject extremism”, asserting that “many Muslim leaders drag their feet”.

Over at the Independent, in an piece entitled “Sane, ordinary Muslims must stand up and be counted” (hailed as “a quite brilliant article” by Tory blogger Iain Dale) Yasmin Alibhai-Brown gives a boost to the tiny and irrelevant British Muslims for Secular Democracy and welcomes the government’s sidelining of the Muslim Council of Britain, which she describes as having acted as an “apologist” for the “killing brigades”.

Leo McKinstry in the Express rants that “British Muslims must show which side they are on”, complaining bitterly that “Alex Salmond claimed that ‘individuals, not communities‘ were responsible for terrorism, a piece of nonsense given that it is the Muslim community that has bred the terrorists. In London, Mayor Ken Livingstone was even more reprehensible. He dismissed the idea of any connection between Islam and terrorism, claiming that: ‘Muslims are less likely to support the use of violence for political ends than non-Muslims‘. Yeah, right, tell that to the relatives of those killed in the July bombings, or the Twin Towers, or the Bali attacks or the Madrid massacre.”

Mad Mel in the Mail calls for a ban on Hizb ut-Tahrir (who have in fact publicly opposed the attacks) and goes on to assert that “while most British Muslims say they would have no truck with terrorism or violence, an insupportable number of them do endorse appalling ideas”. Mel has an explanation for this state of affairs: “Our [sic] Muslim community is particularly vulnerable to Islamist extremism because of the collapse of Britain’s belief in itself and the corresponding rise of multiculturalism and minority rights.”

An editorial in the Express headed “We should abandon failed policy of multiculturalism” chimes in with the recommendation that the government should adopt a programme of “no state funding for Muslim faith schools and … an end to so-called ‘chain migration’ under which young British Muslims are pressured into marrying foreigners to afford their extended families a route into the UK…. It is surely also time for the Government to consider a legal ban on the burkha in public places. This is a nation where law-abiding citizens are not ashamed to show their faces. The era of politically correct cultural surrender must be brought to an end.”

And, in the right-wing blogosphere, David T of Harry’s Place takes the opportunity to have another go at Osama Saeed of MAB, accusing him of advocating “the deliberate slaughter of civilians” and helpfully providing a link to an earlier post describing Osama as a proponent of “clerical fascism“.