Chasm of fear, distrust deepens among Britons
Non-Muslims and Muslims in great divide
LONDON -- Julianna Ash and Abdul Malik have never met, but they are afraid of each other.
Ash, a 44-year-old single mother, feels nervous when she sees local Muslims, whose agenda in Britain she now questions after the arrest last week of 24 Muslims suspected of planning airline bombings.
``I worry about terrorism. It scares me," said Ash, who does not consider herself prejudiced. ``It's awful, feeling like that, but I can't help the way I feel."
Malik, a 26-year-old East Londoner who works at a mosque, is nervous, too, aware of the suspicious looks he and his fellow Muslims are given by other Londoners on the street and in the subway, which was bombed last year by extremists.
``Many Muslims feel scared about what's happening. They see that many Muslims are being harassed by the authorities," Malik said as he sat in a tea house in the heavily Muslim Whitechapel neighborhood of London.
Just over a year after the bombings in a bus and London's Underground subway, local residents and community leaders say the division between Muslim and non-Muslim neighbors has deepened, fueled by the war in Iraq, violence in the Middle East, and now a new threat of terrorism at home.
After the public transportation attacks in July 2005, which killed the four suicide bombers and 52 others, Prime Minister Tony Blair met with Islamic leaders in an effort to quell a potential backlash against law-abiding Muslims and to establish a joint political and community campaign to prevent terrorism.
But since then, the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims has become more polarized, local leaders say, as frustration builds over the war in Iraq and some non-Muslims worry about growing radicalism among young Muslims. Muslims were jarred in June when 250 police stormed the home of two brothers, shooting one, on a counterterrorism raid that produced no criminal charges and had the London police apologizing for their mistake.
The arrests last week of 24 Muslims -- one of whom has been released, and 23 of whom have yet to be charged -- have only added to the fear and mistrust on both sides.
Friends of those arrested say the suspects were wrongly rounded up, victims of an overreaction by law enforcement. Muslim community leaders vehemently denounce terrorism and violence, but say Britain's foreign policy and Blair's close alliance with President Bush are feeding an extremist mindset among some Muslim youth.
British politicians reject suggestions that their policies might encourage terrorists. And non-Muslim Londoners -- including those who say they are against the war in Iraq -- are becoming more fearful for their safety and more suspicious of fellow Britons who happen to be Muslim.
``Nobody wants to back down," said Muhammed Abul Kalam , a community activist with the Young Muslim Association.
Islamic leaders have repeatedly noted that their faith rejects violence, and that only a small minority of Muslim extremists are involved in terrorist activities. But recent events, the leaders fear, have entrenched a mutual suspicion between Muslims and non-Muslims. And even in neighborhoods where Christians and Muslims live and work alongside each other, tension surfaces.
``They're brainwashed from childhood," said a non-Muslim merchant who operates in a heavily Muslim neighborhood. He said he has no problem with his customers but refused to be identified because ``fanatics" might hurt him.
News coverage in some British media, combined with Bush's use of the term ``Islamo-fascist" to describe terrorists, has further infuriated Muslims, Kalam said.
``It's an obvious way of scaring people, a way of instilling a lack of trust in a community," Kalam said. ``What they do is further isolate the community, and that can only help the terrorists."
A group of prominent Muslim leaders, including several members of Parliament, wrote an open letter to Blair over the weekend, suggesting that Britain's involvement in the Iraq war and Blair's refusal this month to endorse a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon have aggravated the problem. ``Do Muslims not have a very good reason to play `the victim card'?" The Muslim Weekly editorialized in a separate missive.
British officials heatedly reject the idea that their foreign policy is to blame. It is a ``dreadful misjudgment that foreign policy of this country should be shaped in part, or in whole, under the threat of terrorism activity," Home Secretary John Reid said on a BBC broadcast yesterday.
But critics of Britain's foreign policy are baffled that British-born Muslims would consider blowing up their own countrymen.
``It's a revenge thing. We've killed thousands of their people," said Kirsty Tankins , 19, referring to the Iraq war. ``They want to kill thousands of ours."
Increasing numbers of youth are becoming ``radicalized" in recent years, said Inayat Bunglawala , spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain. The war in Iraq and the conflict on the Israel-Lebanon border has given some Muslim youth another reason to defy the state, Muslim leaders and analysts said.
``Islam does teach that Muslims everywhere are part of a single brotherhood, and we should not stand for injustice," Bunglawala said. ``Extremists have been successful in saying the democratic network has been used and abused -- that you can march all you like, but if [the government] is determined to do something, they will do that."
Further, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted this spring, British Muslims overwhelmingly tend to see themselves as Muslim first, and British second, with 81 percent identifying themselves by their religion before their nationality.
And unlike the United States, where many American Muslims embrace certain elements of US society even as a religious minority, Britain has never billed itself as a melting pot, said Juliette N. Kayyem , a terrorism specialist at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. ``It's one thing to make a community not feel hostile to the state, but the second step is making the community feel invested in the security of the state. That's where you get into difficulty," Kayyem said. 