All Muslims' living in fear' in Britain

Every Muslim in Britain is living in fear of police harassment, arrest, and possible execution in the wake of the July 7 bombings, a radical Islamic political party said today.

Hizb ut-Tahrir urged Muslims to continue speaking out against British foreign policy and accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of hypocrisy for treating corrupt Muslim leaders as “…friends and allies”.

Spokesman Dr Imran Waheed said the entire Muslim community in Britain is now being held responsible for the actions of a few.

“In these times when every Muslim in the community is living in fear of harassment, arrest, and possible execution, Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain urged the Muslim community to remain united and not be divided along government lines of moderate and extremist,” he added.

Muslims should not be silent, but should continue to speak “…the truth against injustice and oppression through peaceful political means as taught to us by Islam”.

Dr Waheed spoke as around 1,000 party delegates attended a conference at the Royal National Hotel, in Bloomsbury, central London.

He said there was a “…well-founded massive distrust of police and intelligence services…” within the Muslim community.

This was made worse by the failure to find justification for the Iraq war, and the shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes by police, who mistakenly thought he was a suicide bomber.

Dr Waheed said after the London bombings, which killed 56, there have been attempts to silence the UK Muslim community. He said Hizb ut-Tahrir was non-violent, and campaigned politically for Islamic governments in the Muslim world, but not in the West.

The party is opposed to the intellectual, political, economic and military colonialism by Western countries in the Muslim world.

Following the bombings, the party said that Islam does not allow the bombing of innocent civilians.

Hizb ut-Tahrir has been listed as a terrorist organisation by the Russian government, and banned in Germany.