The remarks from Islamic extremists in Britain highlight Prime Minister Tony Blair's challenge in tightening anti-terrorism laws while respecting the views of the nation's 1.6 million Muslims. Blair responded to the July 7 attacks that killed 56 people by proposing legislation criminalizing speech that condones such violence. Yesterday, bombs failed to explode and there were no injuries as the subway was targeted again.
``Britain has a huge problem,'' said Robert Leiken, who studies Muslim fundamentalism at the Nixon Center in Washington and advises the U.S. government. ``There's a very large contingent of visitors, asylum seekers and immigrants who have taken advantage of a liberal system and have an interest in attacking the U.K.''
As London's transport system recovers from the second attack in as many weeks, Blair's government is weighing how to act. For Britain, the biggest shock from the July 7 blasts that killed at least 56 was that the perpetrators were home grown.
The four bombers, aged between 18 and 30, grew up in Muslim communities in Yorkshire, northern England, and carried U.K. passports. That contrasts with the U.S. experience in 2001, when the assailants of New York and Washington were foreigners.
Blair's Response
``Everybody is canny enough to know what these people are trying to do and that is to intimidate people and scare them and frighten them,'' Blair said in London yesterday. ``This evil, bankrupt ideology based on Islam combined with terrorism, this is something that has built up over time and it's something that will have to be dismantled over time.''
Parliament will consider laws criminalizing ``acts preparatory'' to terrorism and speech to ``glorify and condone'' violence. as early as October. The security services including Scotland Yard and MI5 are reviewing whether they should act faster against suspected terrorists.
``The instinct in British security services is to collect a great deal of legal evidence that can stand up in court,'' said Jonathan Eyal, director of the Royal United Services Institute, a military consultant that counts the U.K. Foreign Office among its clients. ``That creates a great deal of tension with the Americans, who are jumpy and like to pounce.''
Extremist Minority
The more enduring problem is how to combat extremist views within Britain's Muslim community, according to community leaders including Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain representing 400 Islamic groups.
``There is a profound challenge,'' Shahid Malik, a Muslim member of Parliament whose district was home to one of the suspected July 7 bombers. ``We've got to work better at confronting those evil voices, as minute as they are.''
Since the 1950s, European countries have supplemented their labor forces with guest workers from abroad, much of it from the Muslim world. Today, Europe's Muslim population numbers 15 to 20 million, about 5 percent of the population. That compares with 3 million in the U.S., or 2 percent, according to Leiken.
In Britain, the Muslim population isn't as prosperous as the rest of the nation. About 68 percent of U.K. Muslims are descended from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the 2001 census showed. Twenty percent of U.K. Bangladeshis were unemployed in 2002, four times the white rate. About 4.2 percent of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis were the victim of racial crimes in 1999, double the rate for blacks, the National Statistics office said.
`Losers'
``Many young Muslims use a word with me to describe their community: losers -- people with plenty of resources who aren't using those resources,'' said Irshad Manji, a Muslim and author of ``The Trouble With Islam Today.'' ``Suicide bombers today are given a place that celebrities are given in the West.''
Britain also has developed a tradition of providing shelter to religious leaders cast out from other countries. Bakri claimed political asylum in U.K. in 1985 after being deported from Saudi Arabia, which accused him of having links to terrorist organizations.
Bakri told the Evening Standard on July 19 that the attacks on London were done because ``the British people did not make enough effort to stop its own government committing its own atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.''
Speaking in an interview with Bloomberg News an hour before the attacks yesterday, he said, ``why did you not listen to the words of wisdom from Osama Bin Laden? He offered a treaty with the European people. If I see someone who wants to do (a bombing) I will hold him back. But I would never, ever report him to the police. If you want to call me an extremist or radical or fanatic it doesn't bother me.''
`Preaching Hate'
To date, Britain's strategy in choking off terror has avoided targeting people spreading anti-western messages. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair has complained that prosecutors rejected all except one of the 20 cases of ``preaching hate'' he has uncovered.
``The attitude of the British authorities was that even if they're fire and brimstone preachers, they were allowed to sound off,'' said Paul Wilkinson, chairman of the Center for the Study of Terrorism at the University of St. Andrew's in Scotland. ``They were seen as propagandists, not a real threat.''
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