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Muslims In Britain
are Being Turned Into Pariahs
"We have had enough of anti-terror raids, stop and search and a
hostile press"
“BRITISH MUSLIMS have
reached a turning point. I don’t think they’re going to take this
for much longer,” remarked a seasoned TV news reporter attending a
packed Muslim conference in Tooting, South London on a scorching
afternoon, last Sunday.
The conference had been organised to discuss the 609 arrests since
9/11 of mainly young Muslim men under the anti-terror laws and, in
particular, the case of Babar Ahmad. The 30-year-old computer
analyst was first arrested at his home in Tooting in early December
2003 and claimed that he was seriously assaulted by several police
officers at the time. He also said that he had been forced to kneel
with his face to the ground — in the style of the Islamic
prostration during prayer — while being taunted with cries of “Where
is your God now?”
Certainly, the pictures of the clearly bruised Mr Ahmad which
appeared in the Muslim press immediately after he was released
without charge six days later, convinced many British Muslims that
the police had indeed trampled over the laws which they had sworn to
uphold.
Just three days before the conference, and with a Police Complaints
Authority investigation into the alleged beating still not completed
after eight months, Mr Ahmad was rearrested, this time under a US
extradition warrant claiming that he was a key al-Qaeda fundraiser.
Those who attended Sunday’s conference were in no mood to believe
these latest allegations. And you can perhaps understand why.
In November 2002, we were treated to front-page stories about the
arrest in London of an alleged al-Qaeda cell that had been plotting
to release cyanide gas into the Underground. As we now know, no one
was subsequently charged with — let alone convicted of — any such
plot. In April 2004, ten people were arrested mainly in the
Manchester area. Several papers claimed that Manchester United’s
football ground was the target of their bomb plot. No, no, boomed
another paper, it was Manchester’s Trafford Shopping Centre. The ten
were all released without charge, and the papers which had earlier
speculated so assuredly and energetically did not feel it necessary
to give their readers any explanation about this curious turn of
events.
Contrary to the impression left by much of our sensationalist media
and their perverse fixation with the ridiculous antics of Sheik Omar
Bakri Mohammed and his tiny — and not very merry — band of
semi-thugs, only 15 people have been convicted under anti-terror
legislation since 9/11. And the majority of these convictions have
been for credit card fraud or immigration offences.
For many years, Muslim immigrant communities in the UK had a “keep
our heads down” mentality. But the relentless pressure of
anti-terror raids and stop and search activities, together with a
steady stream of virulently hostile commentary on Islam and its
followers in our press, are persuading an increasing number of
British-born Muslims that it is time to say enough is enough.
Many of them joined hundreds of thousands of their non-Muslim fellow
citizens in the huge — and peaceful — anti-war demonstrations of
2002 and 2003. The Government ignored them. For months now these
same citizens have been watching the wretched spectacle of ministers
performing the most shameful of linguistic contortions to explain
away the absence of weapons of mass destruction in occupied Iraq.
The War on Terror and the bloody occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan
have intensified the prejudice that British Muslims experience. Last
month, a BBC investigation found that job applicants with Muslim
names were much more likely to be discriminated against than other
groupings. CVs from six fictitious candidates — who were given
traditionally white, black African, or Muslim names — were sent out
to 50 employers by Radio 5 Live. Candidates with “white” names were
far more likely to be granted an interview than a similarly
qualified person with a “Muslim” name (by a margin of almost 3 to 1)
or a “black” African name (by a margin of 2 to 1).
Last month The Sunday Telegraph published a series of four
incendiary, anti-Muslim comment pieces by someone using the
pseudonym Will Cummins. Apart from comparing Muslims with dogs (July
25), Mr Cummins offered us the following historical lesson:
“Christians are the original inhabitants and rightful owners of
almost every Muslim land and behave with a humility quite unlike the
menacing behaviour we have come to expect from the Muslims who have
forced themselves on Christendom” (July 4).
Source: The Times
13 August 2004
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