Racist reprisals feared for London terror bombing

Claiming to have identified the remains of three of the bombers, police searched their homes in Leeds. Searches reported finding a “significant amount” of explosive material at one address.

Immediate police appeals for calm among local communities did little to allay fears of a racist backlash. Though the media has been careful to stress that only a “minority” of Muslims engage in terrorism, this has been coupled with pointed demands in the media for Muslim organisations to be firmer in their condemnation of the bombings.

Despite the fact that every Muslim organisation in Britain has come out strongly against the atrocity carried out in London, the London Evening Standard editorialised, “But the challenge for Britain’s Muslim leaders is to define being a good Muslim as one who supports the British authorities as they try to track down terrorists, not one who feels the remotest fellow-feeling towards perpetrators of crimes that are likely to include Muslims among their victims.” The paper adds that “racial incidents almost doubled in the days after the bombings.”

Charles Moore in the July 9 Daily Telegraph rejected London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s statement that “Islam and terrorism don’t go together.” On the contrary, Moore argues, they must indeed be linked in the same way as “the words ‘Irish’ and ‘terrorist’ went together.”

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http://wsws.org/articles/2005/jul2005/musl-j14.shtml