The British Muslim community roundly condemned the London blasts. The continuing investigation into who was responsible, though, threatens to open a can of worms, writes Gamal Nkrumah In a report released last week Chatham House, Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs, made it clear the UK's close relationship with the United States had enhanced Al-Qaeda network's capacity to recruit and raise funds, leaving Britain in danger of further terrorist attacks. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Minister Jack Straw were quick to refute the claims. Straw expressed his astonishment at claims that the presence of UK troops in Iraq had made the attacks more likely, while Blair described the suicide bombers as being in thrall to an "evil ideology". Following the bombings the British Home Office is seeking to fast- track new anti-terrorist legislation. "The British Muslim community is concerned about anti-terrorist legislation, especially against the so- called 'stop and search' laws which we feel have been enforced exclusively against Muslims and non- whites," Zaher Birawi, imam of the Leeds Grand Mosque, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "We fear the government might seek to further curtail personal freedoms. And we fear that far right groups will seek to take advantage of the wave of anti-Muslim sentiment to unleash terror against members of the Muslim community." Birawi said there had been no revenge attacks so far on the Muslim community in West Yorkshire but there had been an arson attack against a small mosque in the district of Armley, Leeds. Birawi stressed that a "general air of tolerance and peaceful coexistence prevails in Leeds". He described the peaceful march, Unity in Our Community, held last Saturday as an example of the harmonious inter-ethnic relations that characterise the city. "People representing all racial and religious groups were present at the march which took place in Hyde Park, Leeds," he said. At least 55 people were killed and 700 injured in the 7 July London blasts. When it transpired that three of the suicide bombers were residents of Leeds, the focus of the search for Al-Qaeda sympathisers in Britain focussed on West Yorkshire, which includes both Leeds and Bradford, cities which between them are home to an estimated 400,000 Muslims. The British Muslim community is divided into many different sects and orders and fraught with racial and ethnic divisions. Those of Pakistani origin constitute by far the largest segment of the country's Muslim population, numbering over 600,000. Bengalis and Muslims of Indian origin form the second and third largest groups, numbering 400,000 and 300,000 respectively. There are also 300,000 African and Arab Muslims, spread more or less evenly across the country. Condemnation by the British Muslim community of the London blasts has been nothing short of thunderous. The British Muslim Forum, Britain's most influential Sunni group, issued a fatwa condemning the 7 July London blasts, stating that the suicide bombings were the work of a "perverted ideology". Muslims from all over Britain were among the protesters who demonstrated outside the Houses of Parliament, Westminster last week. "We need a partnership between government and Muslims to show people they are not being ignored and that their concerns will be heard," said Inayat Banglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain. "Who has given anyone the right to kill others? It is a sin. Anyone who commits suicide will be sent to hell," said Mufti Mohamed Gul Rahman Qadri, the chairman of Jamaat Ahl Al-Sunna. Leaders of the Muslim community in Britain were quick to point out that they are aware of the "scheming machinations of those who propagate violence", as Birawi put it. Three of the suicide bombers had visited Pakistan recently, and Pakistan has emerged as a focus of the search for the instigators of violence and terror. MI5, Britain's domestic secret service, and MI6, its external wing, have been collaborating closely with the Pakistani authorities. Pakistani intelligence agents have rounded up scores of suspects and a number of madrassas, or Islamic religious schools, have come under heavy surveillance by the Pakistani authorities. Investigators increasingly believe there is a close correlation between the ideas and activities of militant Islamists in several Muslim countries, and Pakistan in particular, and militant British Muslims. "We must accept that the poisonous preachers of violence and hatred in the name of Islam, few in number though they may be, have to be halted in their actions," Shahid Malik, Labour MP for Dewsbury, wrote in the Financial Times. "This means ending their access to, and their manipulation of, impressionable and vulnerable young men." "The knowledge that the bombers were British Muslims, living what were, to all appearances, respectable and unremarkable lives, has sent us a signal we can no longer ignore, that there is indeed an 'enemy within'. The battle for the soul of the [British Muslim] community has begun," he concluded. West Yorkshire has more than its fair share of disadvantaged and disenfranchised Muslim youth. Six men have now been arrested in the county under Britain's stringent anti-terrorist laws, and the investigation in Leeds now centres on the Iqra Learning Centre, a shop selling Islamic books and DVDs. Yet despite the early successes of the British investigation into the London bombings few doubt that the task of containing the terrorist threat remains Herculean.
