Posted on 08/10/2006 7:53:58 PM PDT by Alouette
LONDON - News of a thwarted plot to down trans-Atlantic airliners sent a shiver of anxiety through Britain's Muslim community Thursday.
Muslim men accustomed to nervous looks from passers-by after last year's transit bombings noticed they were attracting them again. Some said they worried about a spike in hate crimes and job discrimination.
The suspects were believed to be mainly British Muslims, at least some of Pakistani ancestry. Three of the four suicide bombers who struck London's transit system were Britons of Pakistani origin, and many Muslims feared their community would be held responsible this time.
After an evening meeting of community leaders in east London, a spokesman for the Waltham Forest Islamic Association said one of those arrested was a woman in her 20s, who has a 6-month-old baby. Imtiaz Qadir said he knew other people who had been taken into custody in the raids.
"I know five of the men very well and they are really respectable young Muslim men," Qadir added. "I am totally shocked. I don't believe they've done anything to warrant this."
Monirul Sardar, 33, a Briton of Bangladeshi origin who runs an east London travel agency, said he'd noticed his bushy beard drawing stares after every major terror attack in recent years.
"It's started up again," he said. "People are afraid of me, mostly. ... If it's an old man, a lady in a hijab (head covering), they'll pick on them."
Harris Bokhari, a spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, said the group was asking mosques to urge worshippers to report any racial attacks.
But he said Muslims had demonstrated after the Sept. 11 attacks and the London bombings that they would not let such trouble stop them from participating in British life.
The Muslim community's relationship with police has been fraught in recent months, and some said they were waiting to see what evidence police would produce of the alleged bomb plot.
"They've arrested people, but let's see what they find from them," said Maj Ali, 27, who works at a northeast London restaurant near a home police were searching as part of their terror investigation.
"They didn't find nothing," he recalled of a June raid in which officers shot a man in the shoulder in his east London home during a search for the makings of a chemical bomb.
The man and his brother were arrested but later freed without charge. That raid and the fatal subway shooting last year of an innocent Brazilian man mistaken for a terrorist infuriated many Muslims.
"Was this (airline bomb plot) information really accurate or not from the police in terms of its intelligence?" Bokhari asked. "We need to be aware how these people were arrested."
When one home was raided Wednesday night, neighbors said unmarked police cars lined the busy street in Walthamstowe, east London. About 20 officers broke down the door of a three-story yellow and white building and searched its first-floor apartment with flashlights.
Neighbor Wendy Phillips, 31, said the men who lived in the home had paid for it in cash — unusual in expensive London — and just moved in last month. A white and red "SOLD" sign still stood in front.
"It's scary when it's on your doorstep," Phillips said. "You start wondering who you're living next door to."
Amar Singh, 17, stood on the corner across the street from the house talking animatedly with friends about the alleged plot.
"I'm shocked," Singh said. "This is usually a quiet area."
___
Associated Press Writer Katie Fretland contributed to this story.
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
This is a predictable headline, but why don't we see any stories about Muslims doubting their faith, or reconsidering their cultural ties?
Considering how much help they have been in tracking down those in their midst; who want to kill themselves and take as many innocent lives as possible - I can take their discomfort with great ambivilance.
They are free to leave, and I doubt I'm the only one who wishes they all would.
If a Christian sect were involved with terrorism; you can bet the farm that every other semi-related sect would join forces to hunt the terrorists down like the vermin they are. You can also bet the farm that every other Christian group would condemn and devote their faith into exposing the terrorists as servants of Satan.
The silence from the Mullahs is deafening.
Just once, juuuuuuuuust once, I'd like to see this dreaded backlash actually materialize. Then these crybaby ragheads would see that a few sullen stares at the airport are really nothing to get upset about. Getting your head caved in by roving gangs of strongarm yobs is.
The Brit's sentiment for the Muslims is pretty much reflected by those in the USA.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! I haven't heard of any non-Muslim groups trying to board Arab airlines to just blow up 300+ people for religious purposes.
In the case of the thwarted UK plan, 10 planes x 300=3,000 people, maybe more if they were boarding Air Buses.
Cry me a river!
Let the Backlash Begin!!! We have coddled those fanatics for waaaaaay too long.....they want evryone one of us dead.
a recent British poll produced the following...and THEY fear a backlash.......
Almost a quarter of British Muslims say the 7/7 bombings can be justified because of the Government's support for the war on terror, according to an opinion poll.
And nearly half of those polled, or 45%, believe the 9/11 attacks on New York were a conspiracy between the US and Israel.
The survey, for a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary to be screened tonight, found Muslims under the age of 24 were twice as likely to justify the 7/7 attacks as those aged over 45.
It found 24% across all age groups either agreed or tended to agree that the 7/7 bombings were justified, although 48% said they "strongly disagreed" and 17% said they did not know.
Doogle
Now it starts.....followed by protests and peace rallys!
HERE'S YOUR &^%( HATE CRIME, YOU SELF-CENTERED, ROT-RIDDEN SACKS OF CRAP! WHY DON'T YOU HELP FOR A CHANGE???
Great Britain, like too many other European countries, has imported a 5th column.
Enoch Powell was ahead of his time.
British, or for that matter, any muslim who has made it so far as to have infiltrated every nook and cranny of western civilization has nothing to fear, as the media bends over backwards to seed the headlines with tales of muslim's "fears" of reprisals against "them."
Muslims are more afraid of their British neighbors who have gone out of their way to tolerate them than they are of the terrorists whose attacks indiscriminately kill Muslims and non-Muslims?
Muslims should be more afraid of the terrorists in their midst than of the Brits.
Muslim men accustomed to nervous looks from passers-by after last year's transit bombings noticed they were attracting them again. Some said they worried about a spike in hate crimes and job discrimination.
Click the Pic J
CLOSE EVERY MOSQUE IN THE US AND GREAT BRITAIN...NOW.
< Raises an eyebrow...>
Instead of whining about a backlash, why don't British Muslim rise up and start an organized campaign to weed out the Radical Muslims in their midst? Wouldn't that improve their public image? Their inaction makes them appear to be in sympathy with their IslamiNazi brethren.
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