LONDON/ROME, 5 August 2005 — “You filthy Muslim dogs. You will be torched this Friday. Many Muslim pigs will burn,” the hand-scrawled note reads. At a recently vandalized mosque in the east of Britain’s capital, a shocked 65-year-old Siddique Ali handles one example of hate mail targeting British Muslims following the deadly bomb attacks on London’s transport system on July 7.
“We are afraid,” said Ali, a member of the committee, which runs the mosque. “These people are giving us warnings. But if they came in front of us we could give a reply or try to understand, but they are not coming.”
Attacks motivated by religious hatred have multiplied six-fold in London since the suicide attacks by four British Muslims which killed 52 commuters, and another wave of failed attacks two weeks later, according to police statistics.
Britain is home to 1.6 million Muslims, just under three percent of the population. The vast majority hail from the Indian subcontinent rather than the Middle East.
Community relations in multicultural Britain have generally been peaceful, although tensions between different ethnic groups occasionally flare into violence such as summer 2001’s race riots in the northern towns of Bradford, Oldham and Burnley.
British Muslims say they suffered increased abuse after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York later that year, but that those tensions had largely dissipated prior to the London blasts.
Two days after the July 7 bombings, however, vandals smashed about 20 windows at the front of the Mazahirul Uloom Education and Cultural Institution, a bright blue mosque in the east London district of Stepney Green.
Prayer leader Saleh Ahmed surveyed the damage alongside Ali. “I was sleeping upstairs and late at night, about three o’clock, I heard a banging sound,” Ahmed said. “I came down and found these broken windows and glass all over the floor.”
Crime experts say the figure of 269 hate crimes since July 7 is an underestimate as many offences are not reported. Unofficial estimates range up to 20 times higher. The Muslim Safety Forum lists murder, arson, assaults and bomb threats among the incidents.
In one case reported in south London, an imam was attacked as he cycled to afternoon prayers and beaten unconscious.
“He started screaming ‘Al-Qaeda’ at me whilst punching me,” Muhammed Haq, 27, told the Muslim News newspaper.
Less violent episodes include reports of bus drivers refusing entry to Muslim women wearing the hijab, or headscarves, racist graffiti and bacon smeared on a mosque entrance in Wales. “What happened after 9/11 and the impact on the Muslim community was terrifying,” Monsur Miah, 17, said in Stepney Green. “It is happening all over again.”
Concerns in the Muslim community are such that the chairman of the Council of Mosques and Imams, Dr. Zaki Badawi, has suggested Muslim women could stop wearing hijabs to avoid abuse.
But the Assembly for the Protection of the Hijab, a Muslim women’s group, rejected the idea and said wearing the hijab was a duty.
The Muslim Safety Forum fears July’s attacks could lead to widespread discrimination against Muslims in Britain.
“People are trying to rationalize what has happened,” a spokesman said. “If you are going to get the right-wing media blaming it on Muslims that will click home with a minority.” “But this is going to have wider implications — access to services and employment. We need to be prepared.” But in the multi-ethnic London neighborhood of Brixton, a few minutes walk from where police mistook a Brazilian man for a bombing suspect and shot him dead, Muslim women said they had yet to suffer discrimination because of the bomb attacks.
“Where there are more white people maybe there is a problem,” 29-year-old grocer Makka Adams said. “It is so mixed here I do not feel different.” “But I do not know what will happen tomorrow.”
Meanwhile, a British court yesterday ordered the first person to be charged in connection with the failed July 21 bomb attacks in Britain to remain in custody. Thousands of police officers patrolled London’s streets and sprawling subway system, four weeks after four bombs killed 56 people.
Ismael Abdurahman, 23, from southeast London, spoke only to confirm his name and age during a 10-minute hearing in Bow Street Magistrate’s Court before being led to jail.
He faces charges of withholding information that helped suspected subway bomber Hamdi Issac initially avoid capture.
Issac was later detained in Rome and is being held on international terrorism charges. Italian court officials yesterday said an extradition hearing would be held Aug. 17. Abdurahman’s attorney, Anne Faul, said her client was innocent.
“The defendant will be and is vigorously contesting the charges,” she said. “He has no involvement in terrorist activity whatsoever.”
The massive security operation yesterday involving 6,000 officers was intended to reassure the public four weeks after the July 7 attacks and two weeks after the failed July 21 attacks. Officials stressed there was no specific intelligence of a third attack, but undercover police were mingling with passengers, and officers were armed with machine guns and pistols. Police helicopters hovered above while traffic was heavier than normal.
“It’s a little bit eerie,” said Rosalyn Cooper, 23, before she got on the Tube. “You can’t help thinking about when it will happen again.” On the Northern line, authorities told commuters to watch out for suspicious activity.
Meanwhile, London transport authorities yesterday opened the Piccadilly Line, the subway line that was worst-hit in the July 7 attacks, easing disruption on the network that carries some 3 million passengers a day.
“The return of the Piccadilly line is a major step as the Underground and London get back to normal,” London Underground Managing Director Tim O’Toole said.
Transport for London, the public body that runs the Underground, said passenger numbers had dipped by 30 percent on weekends and by between 5 percent and 15 percent on weekdays since July 7.
Meanwhile, some $14.2 million has been raised through charitable donations to help victims of the July 7 attacks.
The London Bombings Relief Charitable Fund said bereaved relatives would receive payments of $8,900, while people who were injured and spent a night in hospital will receive $5,300.
The Piccadilly Line is one of the busiest sections of London’s subway system. It had been partly suspended since a bomb exploded on a train in the July 7 attacks, killing 21 commuters — a closure that caused significant disruption on the network.
On another development, an extradition hearing has been set for Aug. 17 for the London bombing suspect jailed here, and a decision on Britain’s request for him could come that day, the suspect’s lawyer said yesterday.
Hamdi Issac was arrested Friday in Rome at the home of his brother a few days after slipping through a London dragnet set up in that city after the botched July 21 bombing attempts of three subway trains and a bus.
Issac’s lawyer, Antonietta Sonnessa, told The Associated Press it was likely the judge would make a decision at the Aug. 17 hearing.
The court-appointed lawyer has said Issac wants to stay in Italy, suggesting he would oppose being sent to Britain, but no formal opposition was lodged during preliminary proceedings on the extradition request a few days ago.
Many extradition requests in Italy take weeks or even months before a judge rules, but Britain has been pressing Rome for Issac’s return as it cracks down on terrorism following deadly July 7 mass transit bombings in London. Rome Prosecutor Pietro Saviotti has said Italian investigators are looking into any possible crimes committed in Italy by the Ethiopian-born Issac, a British citizen. But the prosecutor dismissed any idea that the Italian probe would block extradition.
Issac has told Italian authorities he brought a bag with explosives into the subway on July 21, but has insisted to his interrogators that the attack was meant to grab attention, not injure anyone, according to Sonnessa.
