BIRMINGHAM, England, 3 February 2007 — Muslim leaders appealed for calm ahead of weekly prayers yesterday, in a bid to defuse tensions over the arrests of nine suspects behind an alleged “Iraq-style” kidnap and beheading plot.
Mohammad Naseem, a leading religious leader, urged Muslims to restrain their anger amid skepticism about the intelligence, which led to Wednesday’s arrests in the central English city of Birmingham.
Past anti-terror raids in London and other cities have sparked similar reactions among Muslims, frustrated at repeated police targeting of members of their community.
Naseem, chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque, told the Press Association news agency that many Muslims were angry at the heavy-handedness of the raids and at laws allowing suspects to be held for up to 28 days without charge.
“This unfortunate country is moving toward a police state. The laws being passed are wrong and against the traditions of this country,” he said.
He nevertheless appealed for calm.
“Anger is a weakness that we are commanded to control. That’s the Qur’an,” Naseem said. “We must control our emotions, look at it calmly and let the process of law take its course.”
British police were on Thursday given more time to question the nine suspects, all of them said by neighbors to be Britons of Pakistani origin.
Heavy security surrounded Coventry magistrates court when three of the men appeared before a judge on Thursday, a day after the suspects had been arrested in dawn raids in Birmingham.
The magistrate granted police an extra seven days to question the three, as well as six others who chose to remain in a nearby police station.
The court appearances came after police spent the day searching a dozen homes and shops across Birmingham to gather evidence against the suspects.
At the same time, a public relations exercise was under way to allay protests in Muslim-populated areas of the city, where the anti-terror raids have fuelled racial tensions with non-Muslims.
Police distributed 5,000 leaflets — translated into Punjabi, Hindi, Bengali and Urdu — to the local community on Thursday to provide reassurance and support.
“We want to reassure you that the police are not targeting communities or faiths but suspected criminals,” say the leaflets. “Our role is to protect, reassure and support all communities.
But the allegations behind Wednesday’s arrests — that the plotters were planning to kidnap and behead a young Muslim soldier and post a video of the execution on the Internet as a warning — have fuelled fears that such an attack could soon happen here.
— With input from agencies
