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Britons' hate creates terrorists, Muslims say

Muslims say they are treated with distrust, and say that such treatment pushes some of them into extremism.

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published August 30, 2006

LONDON - Real estate agent Kam Khan sits at his desk, hands folded, phone silent. Business in London's Walthamstow area has all but dried up since police raided nearby houses for evidence in the purported plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners.

"No one is coming," the 28-year-old Khan says, staring out at a once-busy street. "I've never been this quiet."

"But this is just what they wanted," his younger brother Rich angrily interjects. "They want us to leave and go back to our country."

"Our country" is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which the Khans' parents left decades ago for a more comfortable life in Britain. Both brothers were born in London, hold British citizenship and consider themselves British. Neither has ever been to Pakistan.

But the Khans say many non-Muslims persist in viewing them and others of Pakistani descent as foreigners, from a nation widely considered an incubator of Islamic extremism.

"I've been told by people, 'Go back to your country,' I've been told by police to go back to my country," Rich, a strapping 25-year-old builder, heatedly continues. "They're making terrorists. You think if those boys come out of jail, they'll be happy?"

British authorities have filed criminal charges against 12 suspects in the alleged plot to smuggle explosives aboard passenger planes bound for the United States. Except for two non-Asian converts to Islam, all of those charged are British Muslim citizens of Pakistani origin. It was the third time in five years that British-born Muslims have been implicated in alleged or actual terrorism. Richard Reid, the infamous "shoe bomber," is serving a life sentence for trying to blow up a Paris-Miami flight in late 2001. And in July 2005, four suicide bombers killed dozens of London subway and bus passengers.

The growth of home-grown terrorism has caused profound angst in Britain. It also raises questions about why Muslims in this country - which prides itself on ethnic and religious tolerance - seem to be angrier and more alienated than Muslims in the United States or other European nations.

Even before the alleged airliner plot was revealed Aug. 10, a survey found substantial alarm about Islamic extremism in Britain, not only among the full population but among Muslims themselves.

According to the Pew Research Center, 43 percent of British Muslims were "very concerned" about the increase in radicalism among fellow Muslims. That was twice the proportion that expressed similar fears in Spain and significantly more than in Germany or France.

Some commentators pin much of the blame on Parliament and No. 10 Downing St.

"Successive governments have slept through the rise of extremism in Britain," Anne McElvoy charged in London's Evening Standard.

"We dismissed (radical imam) Abu Hamza and his ilk as harmless nut cases rather than men intent on creating a permissive environment for terrorism. We imported foreign preachers to preach the need for our immolation. There is fresh evidence that some of our universities have become centers of extreme radical activity. To all of this, blind eyes were turned and are still being turned."

Other commentators say Britain's vaunted multiculturalism has itself fostered Muslim alienation. The Pew survey found that Muslims in Britain have a far stronger Islamic identity than do Muslims elsewhere in Europe - 81 percent of British Muslims think of themselves as Muslims first, British second.

"The cultural heritage of people who come here must be respected," Michael Nazir-Ali, the bishop of Rochester, wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

"At the same time, if they are to adjust to life in this country, they should be prepared to live in mixed communities and not on their own. They should be willing to learn through the medium of English and to be socially mobile, rather than 'ghetto-ised' on the basis of religion, language or culture."

However, many Muslims and other minorities have long complained that discrimination - not refusal to integrate - is the reason they often lead what experts call "parallel lives." Concerned about the growing separatism, the government last week announced creation of a new commission that will look at ways communities in England handle religious tension and extremism.

By "ghettos," Bishop Nazir-Ali easily could have been referring to areas like Walthamstow, home to six of the bomb-plot suspects.

Although officially part of London, Walthamstow is literally at the end of the line of the city's bus and Underground networks. It could not be more removed, physically or culturally, from the trendy restaurants, high-end stores and elegant hotels and residences of central London.

The houses here are modest places with pebble-dash facades and tiny gardens. Many are home to people of Pakistani descent, who make up almost half of Britain's 1.3-million Muslims.

In this one small area of northeast London, there are 10 mosques and dozens of Muslim businesses and charities. Call centers offer cheap rates to Lahore and Karachi. The Islamic Book Store sells Korans and Pakistani-made Natural Honey Cream. The Muslim Women's Society collects clothes for victims of Pakistan's devastating earthquake.

It is a close-knit community where many residents know Waheed Zaman, a 22-year-old biomedical student charged in the alleged bomb plot. They say they have a hard time believing he or the others would ever commit violence.

But they also acknowledge anger. At the police, for stopping Muslims for minor traffic violations while ignoring white offenders. At the government, for what are widely seen as anti-Muslim policies in Iraq and the Middle East. At the media, for focusing on extremist elements.

Ozain Dadabhoy, 35, says he was distressed to find a TV crew interviewing a Muslim radical who was ranting about jihad in front of a mosque on Queen's Road.

"This is the reason Muslims get p - - - - - off. You let people like this be the face of Islam," Dadabhoy says. "Their views aren't the views of most Muslims."

Owner of a halal, or Islamic, meat market in Walthamstow, Dadabhoy wears a beard and dresses in a traditional Pakistani tunic. Unlike many British Muslims, he says he has never been stopped by police at home. But on a trip to the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks, he was held for three hours by U.S. immigration officials.

"I asked one of them, 'Is it only bearded guys you're questioning?' He laughed and said, 'Yes, but tomorrow it's bald-headed guys.' "

Although Muslims carried out the Sept. 11 hijackings, the United States has not had the same problem with home-grown Islamic extremism as Britain. Experts say one reason is that the 6-million Muslim-Americans tend to be better educated and better integrated than their British counterparts.

In Britain, many of the early Muslim immigrants were unskilled laborers who came from poor, rural areas of South Asia to work in mills and factories. Even today, British Muslims tend to have less education than non-Muslims and their unemployment rate is three times the national average.

In the United States, by contrast, a loosening of immigration laws during the Johnson administration led to a huge influx of doctors, nurses and other well-educated Indians and Pakistanis. Rather than settling in ethnic enclaves, as often happened in Britain, many made their new home in upper-crust suburbs.

"I remember in the '70s, the entire pharmacy class of Karachi University came to America," says Zahid Bukhari, a fellow at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University.

"Because they are professionals, they have a better position in society. I also think American society is more accepting than Britain's. There is a tension, no question, but ultimately newcomers settle down and can fulfill their American dream."

The diversity of America's Muslim population has also helped suppress extremism by forcing imams and other leaders to be tolerant of different views and traditions, experts say. American Muslims come from 80 countries, and as many as a third of U.S. Muslims are African-Americans who converted to Islam during the turbulent civil rights era.

"It would have been a perfect storm if we had become Muslims at the same time this was going on," says Ihsan Bagby, a 1969 convert who now is an associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky.

"Things were radical enough in the '60s and '70s without adding crazy Osama into the mix. But the reality is that the large number of people who became Muslims then are older now and see the dead end of radicalism. And they are an authentic voice to youth that this type of radicalism is pointless."

In London, however, many worry that efforts to crack down on extremism will only anger young British Muslims more than they already are.

"We disagree with bombings totally, they are not right," Rich Khan says as his older brother nods in assent.

"No one has ever asked me to become a terrorist. I have been asked to go to the mosque and pray, and I have been told to respect non-Muslims. But I feel we are being hated and I feel everyone is against us."

Susan Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com.

[Last modified August 30, 2006, 00:42:24]