'The main thing we feel is fear, 24/7' - UK Muslims

[General Duke]

'The main thing we feel is fear, 24/7'

 

Threats and a sense of danger

 

Patrick Barkham

Saturday July 23, 2005

The Guardian

 

The first bomb scare at the east London mosque since the suicide bombs in London was yesterday shrugged off by staff. But on Whitechapel Road outside, ordinary Muslims spoke of a pervasive sense of fear and how they felt they were being watched all the time.

"As a community, the main thing we feel is fear 24/7," said a 24-year-old Muslim woman dressed in a hijab and jilbab.

 

At 10.25am a receptionist at the mosque received an anonymous telephone call from a man with an English accent.

 

"The person on the phone said 'is that the east London mosque?' and the receptionist said yes and the caller said 'There's a bomb in your building, you have half an hour to evacuate'," said Dilowar Khan, director of the mosque. "It was a very calm phone call. It wasn't abusive."

 

As the alarm bell rang, 200 people, including 160 children from the three schools based in the mosque and Muslim centre next door, quickly left the building.

 

Mosque leaders praised the police, who they said arrived within five minutes. No device was found and the building was reopened an hour later, in time for Friday prayers.

 

According to Mr Khan, the threat was taken seriously because they had received 16 telephone calls in the last two weeks, three of which made reference to a bomb threat to coincide with Friday prayers.

 

Just as many Londoners are trying to avoid the tube because of fears of more suicide bombs, so worried Muslims are warning each other to stay out of central London, sometimes for different reasons.

 

Windows at the Mile End mosque, near the Whitechapel Road mosque, were smashed shortly after the first bombs two weeks ago.

 

"After September 11 we felt the same, but after a while it did settle down," said Fatemah al Katib, 23, a student originally from Lebanon.

 

"We feel different when we walk the streets now. When you sit down on a train, people move away."

 

"Muslim sisters feel they are in danger and suspected," said the 24-year-old woman, who preferred to remain anonymous.

 

"Everybody is worried about bombs. Everybody is worried about everything, but most of all we are worried about how every day people are being threatened. We wake up and feel insecure. What is going to happen next?"

 

News of the shooting of a man of Asian appearance on the tube spread as local people milled around outside the mosque. For some Muslims, it confirmed their fears about the police response to the attack.

 

"Does that give the police any reason to go and shoot people in public?" said the young woman. "It's just ridiculous. It's not going to help - it's just going to trigger even more trouble."

 

But many Muslims outside the mosque praised the police and said they accepted that being stopped and searched was the cost of terrorism.

 

"Because of a harmful minority, the majority have to pay," said Nakib Islam, a student, as police sirens wailed on Whitechapel Road. "If that means giving up five minutes of my time to be searched, so be it."

 

Mr Islam, who has just finished his A-levels, said he was concerned that women and the elderly would feel the wrath of an anti-Muslim backlash. "What worries me is that all our Muslim sisters, especially the elderly, will be more prone to be attacked. They will see our sisters wearing the hijabs and veils and go up to them and rip them off."

 

Mohammed Alam, 25, a youth worker with Muslims, said: "We are a bit concerned that Muslim women may be stopped by the police and asked to remove their veils. But the police have been very, very helpful and very good."

 

Less helpful, he said, had been the prime minister's rhetoric since the bombings.

 

"Young people condemn the terrorist acts, but at the same time they are a bit annoyed by Tony Blair associating the attack with an ideological clash. This phrase, this 'clash of civilisations' is very irresponsible."

 

He added: "The government is trying to dissociate the terrorist attacks with any of its actions around the world. Still Tony Blair refuses to listen. Not linking the attacks with Iraq is to hide the truth."

 

On his way to Friday prayers, Ruhul Tarasfder also praised the police but criticised the government's "evil ideology" rhetoric.

 

"It's not helpful to us that George Bush used the word 'crusade' and Blair uses 'ideology'. These people should be described as terrorists. They are nothing to do with Islam."