Muslim council condemns ‘evil deeds’ in Britain

LONDON — Muslim leaders in Britain yesterday were swift to condemn a series of deadly bomb blasts in London and they appealed to Britons not to single out their community for reprisals.

The leaders also made an unprecedented appeal to the estimated 1.7 million Muslims living in Britain to tip off the police about who had carried out the bombings.

“These evil deeds makes victims of us all,” the Muslim Council of Britain said.

“The evil people who planned and carried out these series of explosions in London want to demoralize us as a nation and divide us as a people.

“All of us must unite in helping the police to capture these murderers.”

That same appeal was made by the leadership of Europe’s largest mosque and cultural center.

“We call on the Muslim community to be fully cooperative in this situation, so we may all live in peace and harmony and continue to make London the vibrant, tolerant and peaceful city it is,” concluded a statement from the London Central Mosque, whose golden dome rises above one of London’s major landmarks, Regent’s Park.

Other Muslim groups, dismissed by the establishment Islamic representatives as a hard-line fringe, during recent years have expressed public support for al Qaeda, but have avoided giving open backing to terrorist attacks against Britain itself.

One such radical, the Egyptian-born cleric Abu Hamza, influenced a number of youths who later fought in Afghanistan and joined terror cells.

He was forced out of his Finsbury Park mosque some two years ago, and is currently under arrest in Britain while also facing deportation to the United States, which accuses him of terrorist activities.

At the Finsbury Park Mosque after evening prayers last night, the new leadership was careful to display a correct stance.

A huge red-and-black poster outside the brown-brick structure proclaimed: “A new beginning for the Mosque. For better community image, better relations, better services.”

“What happened today horrifies humanity,” said a 34-year-old Algerian-born imam who would give his name only as Faisal. “It is against humanity and against Islam, which means peace.”

He said some of Abu Hamza’s adherents still prayed at the mosque, but they had changed their minds about their past radical ideas.

In the past, Britain’s Muslim vote traditionally has gone to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labor Party. But in May elections, the younger Muslim voters, expressing anger over the Iraq war, were a major factor in cutting Labor’s majority in Parliament.

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