'Bombers, racists, the law: they're all out to get Muslims'

Guardian ^ | 07/24/05 | Anushka Asthana

[Pikamax]

'Bombers, racists, the law: they're all out to get Muslims' Fear of faith-hate reprisals runs high

, Dana Gornitzki, Lorna Martin, Tariq Panja, David Smith and Ned Temko Sunday July 24, 2005

Observer

Jimmy, a Muslim, pulled over his car a few hundred yards from the former home of suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer on Colwyn Road in Beeston, Leeds. He took out a DVD which explored a conspiracy theory about 9/11. 'It is the same with this,' he said. 'The moment a mother rang up about her son from West Yorkshire, they knew they had their fall-men.' Among Beeston's younger Muslims, it was an increasingly common view last week. On the street corners, inside the shops and in the local park, there were mutterings of conspiracy theories as rumours washed over the town. One was that Hasib Hussain - the 18-year-old bus bomber - had been seen alive, another that one bomber's family said he could not have been carrying identification as it was all at home.

Ever since it had become clear that three of the men responsible for the 7 July atrocities were from the same tiny area, Beeston became a hub of activity as police and media descended. Over the past two weeks the mood has shifted from shock to disbelief.

Last week things appeared to have calmed down, with the police lines gone and the cameras out of sight. In the park people walked dogs or played tennis. Near the courts, a group of men - whom Hussain and Tanweer had once hung out with every day - gathered as usual.

After news of the further bombing attempts in London reached them last Thursday, they relaxed more and one said: 'That should take the attention off Beeston.' Any possibility that the new suspects could also be locals was not discussed.

By Friday, as news of more extraordinary developments in the capital filtered through, the mood shifted again. 'London will be like Beirut, Belfast and Palestine now,' said one man. 'It will be a part of life because Bush and Blair can't keep their noses out of other people's business.'

'Bush is the real terrorist,' muttered another.

A 30-year-old man who went to school with Mohammad Sidique Khan - the oldest of the London bombers - said many young Asians in the area suffered from a 'persecution complex'. He said: 'A lot of people had no idea who Osama bin Laden was before 9/11. Then they got this information and believed that Muslims were being persecuted.'

He added: 'Many don't want to get addicted to drink, so they look for another outlet - for them religion is always there.'

Blaming Bush and Blair to justify terrorism is not the majority view among Muslims across the country - but it is the passionate belief of a significant minority. Almost one in four British Muslims sympathise with the motives of suicide bombers, according to a YouGov poll published in yesterday's Daily Telegraph. More than half say that, whether they sympathise or not, they understand why some people behave in the way they do.

The research also showed that nearly one in three thinks that Western society is decadent and immoral and should be brought to an end. Sixteen per cent of British Muslims told the survey that they do not feel loyal towards Britain and 6 per cent went as far as saying the London bombings were justified.

Findings like this produce complex reactions in young British Muslims like Fatema Dossa, 24, a pharmacy graduate from Eastcote, London. 'There is no doubt that the double standards of Western foreign policy have an effect on Muslim youth. You can understand the motives of suicide bombers, but to kill people is different. It is not going to achieve anything.

'If you go to university and see the youth - not just white British but Pakistani and Muslim youth - drinking and drug-taking, you do feel, where is society going? I'm sure the older white British generation would agree society is decadent. But I wouldn't go as far as to say "immoral".'

Fears of an anti-Muslim backlash have been realised in a 500-per-cent rise in faith-hate crimes in the past two weeks. More than 1,000 race and faith hate incidents have been reported to police across the country since the London bombings, though community leaders believe the actual number of incidents is at least four times higher.

Most of the reported crimes are 'low-level' attacks such as graffiti and verbal abuse. However, race monitoring groups across the UK have seen a significant increase in the number of reports of arson attacks on mosques and Muslim women being spat at in the street or not being allowed on buses because they were wearing headscarves.

Police are investigating several serious assaults and one murder related to the backlash. Although most incidents have taken place in and around London, police or community groups across the country have reported a rise in Islamophobic-motivated attacks.

On Friday, police arrested three people after an alleged arson attack at the Buckinghamshire home of suicide bomber Germaine Lindsay. They have also received more than 200 reports of faith-hate incidents, up from 30 for the same period last year.

A race body in Wales yesterday said the rate of abuse had increased from 10 incidents in a month to more than 30 in the two weeks following the 7 July attacks. In Glasgow, a woman sharing the same surname as one of the bombers said her children had been spat on.

According to the Muslim Safety Forum (MSF), there was a sharp rise in Islamophobic crimes the day after the first London bombings. The rate decreased a few days later then increased again after the suspects were revealed to be British-born Muslims.

Since CCTV images were released of the suspects of Thursday's failed attacks, there has been a further rise in apparent reprisal attacks.

Tahir Butt of the MSF said there were serious concerns about the backlash and, while he praised police for their efforts to protect Muslims, he raised questions about how prepared they were for the level of reprisal attacks.

'There are bigots out there who are reading some media reports and deciding to take the law into their own hands,' he said. 'The message from everyone is zero tolerance, but we need action. We need to hear about people being arrested for these attacks on Muslims who are threefold victims. They are targets of terrorists, targets of the Islamophobic backlash and they will be targets of anti-terror legislation.'

Amar Singh, editor of the Eastern Eye newspaper, said Muslim communities were on tenterhooks. 'There is genuine fear. At worst it is assault and abuse, at best it is strange looks or people moving away from you on the train. After 11 September we looked at Americans and thought they were so ignorant ... They didn't know the difference between a Muslim and a Sikh. I can't believe parts of Britain are just as bad. Just as xenophobic.'

Police had hoped an intense backlash could be avoided by responding quickly to hate crimes. A spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers said apart from four arsons, or attempted arsons, and one murder, most incidents involved abuse in the street, minor criminal damage, graffiti, offensive literature, phone and internet threats and abuse, hoaxes and some assaults.

The Met has passed the effort to counter hate crime to its most senior Muslim officer, assistant commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, who told The Observer he would be convening a special meeting of local community figures at Scotland Yard tomorrow.

While positive discrimination is illegal, Ghaffur told an inter-faith meeting in Southall on Friday that he was determined to look for 'imaginative' ways to recruit more Asians and Muslims to the police. One of his ideas was the possibility of London business leaders funding a recruitment drive for Muslim officers.

The tension was evident in east London yesterday on Brick Lane, where the stalls and restaurants are usually bustling on a Saturday. Oly Ahmed, 22, a staff member at Chillies restaurant, said: 'It's not normal, very quiet. Friday night was quite busy but the rest of the week was not even 10 per cent of normal business. It's incredible for Brick Lane. Our business depends on tourists and City workers. They are not coming this way because of problems with travelling. Lots of people are talking about it and everyone is scared of what will happen.'

Aklis Ali, 39, who works at the Best 1 convenience store, said: 'There have been a lot of police on the streets since 7 July. There is tension when my family goes out. When my wife wears a hijab people think she's a terrorist. We don't feel safe - you never know if someone is going to attack you for being Muslim. My wife went to the hospital last week and someone swore at her.'

He added: 'Just because of a few fanatics, you can't blame all Muslims. We all have the same feeling about 7 July. We're human beings.'

[American in Israel]

They fear beer, so they slaugher people? I prefer beer myself...

[backhoe]

To put it very bluntly--

I have long ceased having a care about what these creatures ( Muslims ) think, or feel, or fear, or even care about anymore:

Islam, The Alleged Religion of Peace® ( TARP™ )? Click this picture:

No, I am not exaggerating.
I am not joking-
-this is life versus death, freedom versus slavery that we are talking about.
Click the picture, go to the "last," and read backwards.
If you are not informed about this stuff, you will be made sick. If you are informed, you will be made mad, all over again.

---

...and then, there's this little matter still on the books, waiting to be accounted for:

Where It's 9-11 All the Time...

Click the picture...

"Where it's nine-eleven all the time
and no Sun sets, and no clocks chime
where no voice speaks and no bird trills
the Moon hangs frozen o'er the hills
The winds are still, they seem to say,
Reflect, remember, stop to pray..."

---

"Imam's fiery message speaks to radical British Muslims"

I wrote this some time ago, and while I wish I could change what is said, I cannot, nor will I, retract a single word of it:

---

From my file, "Fire and Blood and Iron:"

---

The entire West ( dare I say "the civilized World?" ) is locked in a fight to the death with militant Islam.

There will be no second-place winner, no "third way" solution-- it is March or Die time, folks.

It is Us versus an eighth-century "culture" of plunder & pillage, forced religious "conversions," and the mistreatment of women.

The sooner we face up to this fact realistically and quit dancing around PC talking-point nonsense about diversity and tolerance, the better off we'll all be.

We did not pick this fight- which really has roots in Jimmy Carter's appeasement in 1979 of militants- but we had damned well better see it for what it is, and be prepared to face it and finish it.

I'll put it in raw, personal terms-- I don't want Sharia law visited upon my women, and I don't want a goat-roper "culture" infesting my land.

I don't want their vile, nasty, loathsome weapons of mass destruction loosed upon my fair country, either.

They picked the fight, and now it is up to us to finish it- balls to the wall, hammer and anvil, fire and blood and iron... freedom is never, ever free, and the coin you pay it in is men's lives and tears and blood.

What we saw during Gulf War I was our military doctrine ( high tech ) versus Soviet doctrine ( throw a lot of low tech iron at the problem )-- and we all know how that turned out.

What we saw in the 3-Week War is Information-Tech,
( What some are calling it Hyperwarfare... )
or 21st Century warfare versus 20th Century...

What I would suggest, and call your attention to, is the fact that we, and Israel, are capable of waging 21st Century warfare, and the entire Arab world is not.

Proven fact, by recent events.

One more thing- this will be a war where we are all called to be warriors- so I very strongly suggest to you that the time has come to get hard, and stay hard... it really is the time for Fire and Blood and Iron...

[Aliska]

My late father used to follow the world news nightly, but he kept much of this toughts to himself; I wish I'd have picked his brains more about things. He died in 1982. He never said anything about the threat of Islam that I can remember.

As a child, he explained the "domino theory" to me, I remember how upset he was the day the Korean war started (how many remember where they were when they found out about that - we were in Ohio travelling to the east cost on vacation), he came home one day and told us at lunch the minute details of a man who spoke at his workplace and how he had been tortured by the North Koreans, and was leery of the Chinese as well as the Russians, but didn't overly sow seeds of fear in us.

He was very disburbed when Pakistan developed nuclear capability. That's all I remember. Anybody remember when that was?

[Wurlitzer]

"I agree that the moderate muslims are getting pressured a bit (perhaps even a bot too much). "

Is this the DU or what? How can any person read the toilet paper comic book for retards, (koran) and not understand that to be a moderate mudslime you would have to ignore most of what you instructed to do to nonbelievers.

The 70+% of mosques in the USA are funded by the Saudis and are based on following the koran to the letter. The moderates, if there are any, have to be a very small percentage of this hate cult.

No amount of pressure on them to change their ways can be too much pressure.

[backhoe]

My Dad lived from 1890 'til 1985, and had seen so much of life & humanity that he was a font of wisdom on just about any subject. War? Lived through many. Loved one with cancer? Happened numerous times. He knew so much about life, and even though he shared so much with me, there was a lot left unspoken- how I wish I could go back, and talk some more with him again! As for this?

He was very disburbed when Pakistan developed nuclear capability. That's all I remember. Anybody remember when that was?

Here's what I compiled a few years ago:

-The India-Pakistani Conflict... some background information- --

[Aliska]

Thanks for the link! Bookmarked. So much good info there.

I don't know which is more frightening, a nuclear exchange between and Pakistan and India, or radicals in that politically volatile and unstable land (Pakistan) who could get control of the nukes if the present government falls. It seems to be holding on by a thread, and you can't count on anyone in that country to really be on our side. They can't keep very good track of the terrists. I think Bin Laden has had or has many hideaways there, and no one seems to be able to capture him, or he's dead.

Worthy of note is that no amount of bounty money brought him in; that's how loyal his closest circle has been.

[processing please hold]

Great post. We, in our family know what we are facing. It is them or us, but a few appeasers and apoligist don't seem to grasp that concept.

Shira law, nope I and my family are, 'Kafir' and shall remain so till we die. Besides, I wouldn't look good in a hijab, it would hide my legs.

Our quality made georgette chiffon hijab is a great all-weather choice and excellent for Summer. Georgette Chiffon is buttery soft, drapes perfectly, and does not slip. Best of all georgette chiffon is breathable and provides complete coverage. Imported from Syria. 100% Polyester. 45 inches x 45 inches. Available in Blue or Olive.

Not my style. :-)