Muslims shocked but sceptical over terror plot

Thursday, August 10, 2006 - 02:28 PM

Muslim groups today reacted with a mixture of shock and scepticism at the announcement by police that they had broken up a major terrorist plot to bomb airliners.

Khurshid Ahmed, a member of the Commission for Racial Equality in Birmingham where some of arrests took place, expressed relief that an attack had been foiled.

“The response here is one of shock that we still find young people actively involved in activities which we would condemn as a society and also a sense of relief that a possible attack has been thwarted,” he told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One.

“In my own view the security authorities need to be commended based on the information we currently have.”

He praised the police for alerting him in advance of the announcement so that he could explain to local community what was happening.

However Fahad Ansari of the Islamic Human Rights Commission said that many Muslims would be sceptical about the police statement.

In the past high profile arrests – such as the Forest Gate raid or the alleged plot to bomb Old Trafford football stadium – had failed to produce any evidence of terrorist activity.

“I think you will get cynicism from the community,” he said.

“Over the last few years we have seen many high profile raids like this plastered over the press to terrify the public. We have seen it time and time again. It has been hit and miss on too many occasions. It is causing a lot of mass hysteria.”

He suggested that the raids could even have been timed to distract attention from the criticisms of the British government’s stance on the Lebanon crisis.

“There has been so much pressure on the (British) government, it could be a way of diverting attention away from its policy on the Middle East,” he said.

He accused Tony Blair of being in a “persistent state of denial” on the impact Britain’s foreign policy – from Afghanistan and Iraq to the Middle East - was having on Muslims in Britain.

“He has to realise that there was a relationship between 7/7 and British foreign policy,” he said.

Birmingham Labour MP Khalid Mahmood appealed to local communities to help provide as much extra information as possible to help the police thwart the terrorists.

He said he believed the arrests were based on “fairly good intelligence” and would not prove unfounded and increase tensions fuelled by recent events in Forest Gate.

“We need the communities to work more together with the police and security services to provide any more information they may have on these people. We have to be very vigilant”.

He said he did not believe the sort of unrest that followed the Forest Gate raids in some Muslim communities was likely to be repeated.

“There has been a lot more intelligence. The authorities have not just relied on people informing ... but have done surveillance themselves for some time. This has not been something which has been rushed,” he said.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone warned against any attempt to blame the Muslim community at large.

“Only a united London can help defeat terrorism, which means that all London’s communities have their part to play,” he said.

“No community in London can or should be targeted or blamed because of the actions of people who are pure criminals.”