Anti-muslim Bias Increases Since 9/11
LONDON — Discrimination against Muslims has increased sharply across Europe since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, isolating many Islamic communities and undermining efforts to build harmonious multiethnic societies, the leader of a British Muslim group said Thursday.
Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the year since the attacks had also brought infringements of civil liberties in Britain.
Sacranie said European Muslims had been unfairly demonized in the media and urged Britain’s government to give them more protection.
“The terrorists of Sept. 11 … also hit our high towers of equal rights and equal inclusion, especially with respect to the British Muslim community,” he said. “The community thought it was moving forward with inclusion and integration, but now it simply didn’t know where it stood.”
The high media profile of British-based extremists added to the problem by worsening the general public’s perception of Muslims, he said. Several radical clerics make frequent appearances on television and in newspapers with statements defending the attacks and calling for the establishment of Islamic law in Britain.
The Muslim Council released a collection of articles on the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks entitled “The Quest for Sanity.” One article accused Britain of violating civil rights with a law that allows authorities to detain suspected foreign terrorists without charge or trial. Nine people are being held under the statute.
Christopher Allen, a researcher at the University of Birmingham who wrote one of the book’s articles, told reporters Thursday that discrimination against Muslims had increased sharply throughout the European Union over the past year, even in places where they had lived for decades with little tension.
“Muslims were being abused, spat on, and Muslim women in particular (have) become a target,” he said. “Everything about Muslims is distorted and exaggerated … This has fed the flames of Islamophobia.”
Sacranie said British Muslims did not want special treatment, but sought the same protection afforded to other minorities, which he said Muslims are denied because they do not constitute a racial group.
He called the Sept. 11 attacks “evil and criminal” but added that they had prompted a destructive chain of events.
“Regrettably, (terrorism) has been used to set a global course of action with little respect for human life, national sovereignty and the rule of law,” he said.
He accused Britain and the United States of honoring “no frontiers, no laws and no scruples” in their fight.