Britons favor tracking Muslim activities

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Famously tolerant Britons overwhelmingly support tough new measures to monitor Muslim immigration and activities inside the country in the wake of last week's terrorist bombings in London, polls show.

That mood is likely to give new impetus to legislation being considered that would make it harder for foreign imams to come to Britain and preach religious hatred from its mosques.

Since the bombings, several isolated attacks on mosques have been reported, and one Pakistani man was killed during the weekend in what police are investigating as a hate crime, prompting Muslim leaders to worry about a violent backlash now that the bombers have been identified.

Even before yesterday's developments, 82 percent of Britons were convinced that the London attacks were carried out by Islamic extremists, according to a YouGov poll published during the weekend in the London Telegraph.

Although respondents overwhelmingly thought the vast majority of Muslims in Britain are law-abiding, the poll found that 60 percent thought security services "should now focus their intelligence-gathering and terrorism-prevention efforts on Muslims in [Britain] or seeking to enter it."

The findings corresponded with the results of a Populus poll for the London Times, which found that more than 85 percent favor tighter controls on persons entering the country and new police powers to arrest those suspected of planning terrorist attacks.

The YouGov poll also found that 46 percent think that Islam poses a threat to Western liberal democracy. A similar question asked after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States received a positive response from 32 percent.

Even before the Thursday attacks, many Britons were concerned about the flow into the country of extremist clerics who have taken advantage of Western freedoms to preach hatred and recruit young Muslims to violent causes, earning the capital the moniker "Londonistan."

In response, the government has been considering a plan to require foreign preachers to possess professional qualifications before they can work in Britain and have a solid understanding of national laws and practical knowledge of their communities if they want to stay.

The government is consulting members of different faith communities before it submits new legislation to Parliament, Home Office spokeswoman Jane Parsons said yesterday.

Under regulations implemented in August, "ministers of religion" who want to work in Britain have to demonstrate a basic grasp of English. Next year, the requirement will be toughened -- the clerics must be "competent" writers and speakers.

Many of the victims of the blasts were foreign-born, according to preliminary reviews of those identified, but that has not prevented tensions between British Muslims and the population at large.

Since last week, four mosques have been targets of arson attempts and several more have had windows smashed, police officials said. A Pakistani man, Kamal Raza Butt, was killed during the weekend after leaving a corner shop in Nottingham, and a spokesman said yesterday that police think "we should investigate it as a racist attack."

Azzam Tamimi, director of the London-based Institute of Islamic Political Thought, worried that tensions would worsen "because the bombers have been identified, and they come from the community. It is possible that some racists will try to exploit this."

Police sharply tightened security around the Leeds Grand Mosque, near the scene of several searches and the arrest of one man yesterday in connection with the blasts.

But Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi, chairman of Arab Media Watch in London, said he does not think the British public was going to hold an entire community responsible for the actions of a few extremists.

He said he was touched by the number of non-Muslims who had called him in the past week to make sure that he was not the victim of discrimination.