Join the debate

It took me all day to find it, but there it was. The blunt expression of open hostility I’d been looking for. On a white wall in Beeston, in an alleyway leading back down towards Dewsbury Road, someone had scrawled “F*** Pakis”. But the slur was almost an afterthought; and in Beeston, it was the only sign I was able to find of any visible tension surrounding the events of July 7 last year.

The relative calm of Beeston, a suburb of Leeds rendered notorious for the fact that it was home to three of the four 7/7 bombers — Mohammad Sidique Khan, Hasib Hussain and Shehzad Tanweer — is further elaborated by the findings in today’s The Times/ITV News poll, conducted by Populus. On the surface, there is much room for optimism. Muslims in Britain, to a large degree, feel positive about their role in British society. In matters relating to the War on Terror, though, our poll shows that while there exists a burgeoning awareness about the need for the Government to intervene in monitoring and controlling a minority of extremists, British Muslims also feel they want to highlight the abuse, hostility and suspicion that they say they have suffered in the past year. Many polled also pointed to a greater need for the Government to engage directly with the desires of their communities.

Nowhere seems better placed to comment on findings of The Times/ ITV News poll than Beeston, a racially diverse area that has come under intense scrutiny in the past 12 months. In the immediate aftermath of the London bombings, the residents of Beeston seemed to take a vow of silence. First denial; then outright anger. A year later, though, many locals speak of an urgent desire to engage with the wider community.

One day in Beeston last week I went to Cross Flats Park, a green sanctuary amid the rows of nearly identical semi-detached houses. In a set of nearby shops I spoke to Mohammed Ali, the owner of Move 2 Property Services, a business he set up six weeks ago. “I just had my first sale confirmed yesterday,” he said, smiling. Before his property business, Ali, 30, ran a mobile-phone shop; one customer was Mohammad Sidique Khan. Ali says Khan would visit the shop to buy mobile phones and phone cards. “It was difficult to read about him being responsible for the attacks in London,” he says. “The Khan I knew once bought a mobile phone off me. He had no money, so I said it was OK to pay me later. I think he went to Pakistan for six months after that, but I’d forgotten about the money he owed me. I’m the kind of guy who can’t even remember what I had for dinner two nights ago. But when he got back, he came to my shop and told me he owed me the money. It is difficult to believe that he was responsible for the bombings in London.”

Ali agrees with The Times/ITV News poll finding that 50 per cent of Muslims think the British invasion of Iraq was the main reason for the London bomb attacks. But unlike a hardcore minority surveyed — only 6 per cent felt that the 7/7 bombers were acting according to the true principles of Islam, and only 13 per cent said the bombers should be called martyrs — Ali said global misgivings about the War on Terror had led to a rise in terrorism. He also agrees with the general statement that the War on Terror is, in fact, a war against Islam, a viewpoint expressed by 56 per cent of those polled. “Before the War on Terror, we didn’t have kidnappings and beheadings. Most people hadn’t even heard about al-Qaeda. Now there has been more terrorism in the past five years than at any other point in recent history. It is politics that has led to more terrorism.”

This sentiment — that the hauteur shown by Western governments in maximising the case for war has led to more terrorism — is a viewpoint held widely throughout Beeston’s Muslim population. Our poll shows that 42 per cent of Muslims, and 78 per cent of non-Muslims, feel that further suicide attacks in the UK are likely. As a realisation of this, though, many locals I spoke to also described the need to root out extremist views within the community. This is a new development; in the months after September 11, it was relatively easy to uncover fanatical preachers, hungry for the oxygen of publicity, and their equally media-savvy associates. Since the events of 7/7, though, and perhaps because the violence was so close to home for most British Muslims, there has been a sea-change in attitudes to tackling extremism.

Muslims are split on the need for authorities to monitor clerics and Muslim organisations. While 48 per cent said it was acceptable for Britain’s intelligence services to infiltrate the latter to gather information on their activities and fundraising, 47 per cent disagreed. In monitoring clerics, the results were similar: 49 per cent said it was acceptable to monitor preachers more closely, while 48 per cent disagreed. Indeed, were it not for the intelligence failures that marked the recent raid in Forest Gate, East London, more Muslims might feel a greater sense of justification in monitoring extremism.

“Of course, if there are reports of something illegal or dangerous happening in a mosque or a house, the police have every right to go in and arrest people,” says Abdul Razaq, 47, a local butcher. “But every time something like the recent [Forest Gate] raids happen, where one innocent man is shot, people lose their confidence in the police. It is not surprising that many young Asian men are nervous about the police.” He talks about the disappointment felt by many Muslims at the Government’s failure in implementing only one of 64 recommendations made by the Muslim task force, set up in the aftermath of 7/7. While Muslims scholars now regularly tour the country and speak to young people, many of the task force’s more urgent recommendations — including a national advisory council for mosques and imams — have been shelved. “Fighting terrorism is a matter for everyone in this country,” says Razaq. “It is unfair to expect the Muslim community alone to do this. Incidents in which innocent people are shot don’t help. It will only isolate us further from the mainstream.”

As with many immigrant communities that have lived in the UK for several generations, our poll also shows a greater degree of acceptance of the work of the police, the Army and the security services. So much so, in fact, that 35 per cent of those Muslims polled said that they would feel pride on discovering that a close member of their family had joined the police. A further 37 per cent would accept the decision, with only 8 per cent saying that they would feel anger. Somewhat similarly, 20 per cent of those polled would feel pride at the news that a close family member had joined the British Army; 28 per cent would accept the decision. However, 23 per cent of those polled would feel anger — this statistic is explained by the fact that any recruit into the Army these days might find him/herself in Iraq or Afghanistan and therefore fighting other Muslims.

“I have thought about joining the police,” says Muhammed Javaid, 31, a taxi driver from nearby Bradford who works in Beeston. Standing near his car, he explains that many Muslims feel the police force pays well, and rewards officers with secure employment and decent pensions. “The Army is different, though; it is not acceptable for Muslims to go and kill other Muslims. I would join the Army, but I would not fight in Iraq, for example.” Would he choose to go to jail, I ask? “For my beliefs, yes. I will not kill fellow Muslims. That is against my religion.”

In contrast to the relative calm that permeates Beeston, the London suburb of Barking is an area where residents hold more strident views on terrorism. Ever since 7/7, the Metropolitan Police has been severely tested, twice with cataclysmic results. Unsurprisingly, it is in London that the War on Terror has a most profound resistance — with three times as many stop and searches as last year. In Barking, immigrant communities have come under added strain with the election of 11 BNP councillors in May’s local elections. The area has also seen a recent rise in racist attacks.

In line with our survey, in which 56 per cent of those polled said they felt that Britain’s anti-terror laws were being fairly applied to the Muslim community, no Muslims in Barking had any sympathy for the 7/7 bombers. “It is a very small number of people, a handful, who might sympathise,” says Latif Raufi, an Afghan stallholder who lost his best friend on 7/7. And while an overwhelming majority of those polled could not justify the suicide bombing of civilian, military, police or government targets — 89 per cent, 79 per cent, 86 per cent and 85 per cent respectively — Raufi said he felt that more suicide attacks in the UK were likely. This degree of fatalism is also highlighted in our poll, in which 42 per cent thought similarly. “That is the world we are living in,” says Raufi. “We have to be careful and do everything we can to stop terrorism. But we have to be realistic as well.”

Populus interviewed 1,131 Muslims aged 18 plus by phone and online between June 1 and 16. Interviews were conducted across the country. Results have been weighted to reflect the population profile of British Muslims as a whole. Populus also interviewed a random sample of 1,005 adults aged 18 plus, from the general population, by telephone between June 9 and 11. Populus is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.

www.populuslimited.com

Join the debate