That could be the path of maximum future damage. "These attacks have led to great uncertainty and worry," Tim Ripley from the Centre for Defence and International Security Studies in Britain told Outlook. "They would focus police attention on the Muslim community, which leads to accusations of victimisation, and then becomes the first step in a dangerous spiral."
Ripley said there was no doubt that many young Muslims had been recruited in Britain for training camps in other countries. "We know the case of Richard Reid, the shoe bomber (the one that took explosives on a flight to the US), who attended terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Several others are proven to have been there," he said. "That certainly indicates a trend." But it should also not lead to "any paranoia about 'the enemy within'," Ripley added.
Muslims in Britain are facing a heightened crisis days. The police have reported many incidents of abuse and harassment. But those seem to be only a small fraction of the number of incidents taking place. In Wembley, two Muslim girls leaving the local library had their hijabs ripped down. Further down the road a young Muslim was pelted with water bottles by three men in a shop. In neither cases did the victims make a complaint. "With what face can we now go to the police," a local Pakistani restaurant owner said.
And the attacks are not directed only at Muslims. "One of the first attacks took place at a gurudwara," Siddiqui said. "After 9/11 too it was not just Muslims who were attacked, but Sikhs and Hindus as well. The whole South Asian community is worried. Bringing changes among the Muslim community will not be easy. We have tolerated these Wahabi trends too long; we must now weaken them and isolate them."
That is just what PM Tony Blair has set out to do. "In the end, this can only be taken on and defeated by the community itself," he says. Blair has called a meeting at his office at 10, Downing Street next week. Ministers, Opposition parties and Muslim community leaders will discuss ways of winning the hearts and minds of young Muslims and combat the "perverted and poisonous misinterpretation" of Islam behind last week's attacks.
The far right has leaped in with a new campaign against British Muslims. "The London massacre has tragically brought home to the entire country the terrible price ordinary people are now having to pay for the combination of the failed multi-cultural experiment, doubled up with Tony Blair's decision to involve Britain in a war that had nothing to do with us," the British National Party said. Hackers crashed the website of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). By one estimate, the MCB was sent about 30,000 hate emails. "We cannot counter far-right hatred," Inayat from the MCB told Outlook. British Muslims now face the serious threat that that anger may not be confined to the far right.
