LONDON, 20 July 2005 — As British Prime Minister Tony Blair, flanked by opposition leaders Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy, hosted a summit of British Muslim leaders at No. 10 Downing Street yesterday, the battle for the “hearts and minds” of young British Muslims continues in the aftermath of the London bombings, which have now claimed their 56th fatality.
Young Muslims, many of them professionals, are now hitting back and openly speaking out against the “tribal mosques” operated by their elders, and the huge generation gap between them. At the same time young Muslim leaders such as Bilal Patel of the “Stop Political Terror” movement and a banking executive in the City, advise caution “because we have to be careful that we do not portray any young religious Muslim as a potential terrorist.”
Another British Muslim businessman, 29-year-old Muhammed Payne, an IT consultant, is financing a website for Muslims and others called “Not in the Name of Peace” to send messages and images opposing violence and terrorism. One of the pictures on the website is of his nine months old son Zakariya in a Crystal Palace football shirt with a stark but emotive message: “I want to grow up NOT blow up”. Other messages include “Islam is a way of life, NOT a way of death”.
These images of “engagement” are in stark contrast to the rhetoric of the self-styled radical leaders such as Omar Bakri Mohammed and Anjem Choudhary of Al-Muhajiroun, who unfortunately thanks to the obsession of the local British media with them once again are making the headlines, giving the impression that British Muslims are divided about terrorism and the suicide bombers in their midst.
Blair urged Muslims to “accept and advocate a society of tolerance”. The extremists dismissed the summit as a meeting of handpicked Muslims who “are pushing Blair’s agenda.” Omar Bakri in an interview in yesterday’s Evening Standard outrageously blamed British voters for the London bombings, by re-electing Blair as prime minister.
The pressure on Blair intensified from within his own Labour ranks, and from yet another devastating leaked document yesterday morning. A confidential dossier by top security experts produced by Whitehall’s Joint Terrorist Analysis Center (JTAC) only three weeks before the London bombings stated that there was no group “with the intent and capability” to attack Britain.
This report was the basis for downgrading the terror alert in Britain from “severe general” to “substantial”. The highest state of alert is “severe specific” just above “severe general”. One analyst asked: “How is it that the men and women paid to protect us, got it so wrong?”
Some politicians are now urging Home Secretary Charles Clarke to urgently review the rules and to deport any Muslim cleric and others who are making inflammatory remarks and inciting terrorism indirectly.
Downing Street has already requested the police to investigate Omar Bakri’s remarks and to see whether there are any grounds for prosecution. Some of the extremists are bent on testing the limits of the proposed anti-terror legislation which includes outlawing the “encouragement and incitement of terrorism” and which is being fast-tracked by the government, with the support of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat opposition parties.
The focus now is on whether there was yet another intelligence failure, or whether the security services are too under-resourced to deal with a task that is too big.
The leak comes at a time when British Transport Police brought in sniffer dogs at the mains stations to protect commuters. These dogs, already used at airports, are trained to detect explosives. London Transport’s Howard Collins berated the public yesterday for leaving unattended luggage at stations which has resulted in 61 station closures and 10 line closures since the London bombings.
London has some 270 stations which handle some 3 million commuters per day.
London Mayor Ken Livingstone in his first press conference in City Hall since the bombings flamed the political debate by declaring that the “Iraq War may have inspired the bombers”. He blamed the CIA for training and funding Osama Bin Ladin and the Mujahideen to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. We created these people. We built them up. We funded them. This has been a terrible legacy.”
But the most stinging indictment of Tony Blair’s Iraq policy came from his former foreign secretary Robin Cook, who in an article in yesterday’s Evening Standard warned: “We will never make progress on Iraq until we stop deluding ourselves and face up to the central truth of the western occupation. The longer it has lasted, the stronger and more violent the insurgency has become.
“The CIA has been so alarmed by the consequences that it has warned Iraq may become an even worse breeding ground for the export of terrorism than Afghanistan ever was. In Iraq we have eliminated a rogue state at the price of creating even greater dangers from a failed state.”
