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."
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Associated Press Writer Katie Fretland contributed to this story.
Sad but true... but i hope the modern generation of civilized folks will learn from the past!
. . . and they say the truth isn't supposed to hurt . . .
Every person in every mosque/terrorist training center that any of the guilty ever attended should be deported as co-conspiritors!
Did they warn anyone of the MURDERS that were to be? Did anyone of them attempt to stop the MURDERERS??
Deport them.... NOW!!!!!
Why is it that you will never, NEVER hear a Muslim say, "We (Muslims) need to figure out why they (Americans & British) don't like us (Muslims). We (Muslims) must have done something wrong to make them (Americans & British) hate us."
Personally, I'd LIKE to see a backlash. Everytime I see them in their burkas I want to hurl. I know that some Muslims are good people; in fact, the tip that came into the UK about this current plan to destroy planes came from a Muslim who was worried about some activities of his "friend," which lead to the surveillance that ultimately foiled their little evil plot, but I also fully realize that most of them hate us and want us to be under their Sharia law - that is their goal. I despise their religion, their belief system, and everything they do and stand for. I know God says to love our enemies but I admit that I don't love them. May God have mercy on me.
Well, for one, a lot of them get killed, so they're not around to tell their story. There are Muslims who have converted. I've read a few books written by them. One was called "Behind the Veil."
Because they are too busy cutting throats of us infidels. All this PC crap can be tied directly to the colleges teaching these moron journalists.
Everytime I hear one of these foreign reporters they are always making excuses for the terrorist scum. They think that it's our faults that they leave the mosques and want to kill people. It's never the crazed imans chanting death to the infidels...
As a British woman, an atheist at that, I can't tell you how sick and tired we are of anything related to Muslims. That they and their entire families should be sent back to their country of origin is a given. I do like the idea of stripping them of all their assets too, as they came to our country with nothing and we gave them everything we had, only to have them turn round and try and kill us. There are so many of them there now that I doubt anything can be done by our wishy-washy government. It will be left to the people to eliminate this threat, and eliminate it we will when we've been pushed far enough. I think that this won't be too long in coming now. There are racial riots happening all over the place and these will escalate. I would never have agreed with the violence some years ago, but we have to act as they act. The whole world is at risk from this virus we call Islam, and we need to stamp it out as soon as we can, ANY way we can. They would do worse to us, and they've already proven this time and again. I vote for a Neutron bomb, as this will leave buildings and oil reserves and just kill every living creature.....we should start with Iraq as that's causing a few problems, then move on until we've wiped them out. A peaceful religion they say? Funny how we've never had any proof of that isn't it?? Let's be just as peaceful to them, shall we?
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