In Both Sorrow and Anger

Sunday, Jul. 17, 2005 By MARYANN BIRD
THE BEST LAD: In Beeston, locals who knew an alleged bomber deny it could have been him.
LORNE CAMPBELL / GUZELIAN for TIME
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Some places look more miserable under a blazing sun than on gloomy days. Tempest Road in Leeds, West Yorkshire, is one of them, a Victorian street built on the cheap for textile mill workers and on the slide, pretty much, ever since. On this mercilessly sunny day, a group of young British-Asian men are gathered outside the King Kebab, a takeaway joint on the end of a strip of budget shops that appear to be closed much of the time. Ali, Pav, Shy, Raja, Safi, Asif and Hasif are talking about their friend Kaki, another local boy, born nine miles from their Beeston neighborhood. "He was the best lad," says one, "everybody liked him." "He was gentle" and "he got on with everybody." Ameer, a younger boy in a nearby park, could "definitely not" believe it was Kaki.

The evidence suggests otherwise. From CCTV images captured at rail stations in Luton and London and personal documents found at the scenes of the London explosions, police have identified the amiable 22-year-old his contemporaries called Kaki as Shehzed Tanweer, who traveled from Leeds to London on July 7, boarded a Circle Line train on the London Underground in the direction of Aldgate station and, eight minutes into his journey, detonated an explosive charge in his rucksack. As the police investigation into the bombings continues, a conversation is taking place on streets and in cafés, mosques and church halls, playgrounds and council chambers. Its purpose: to try to fathom why Kaki and three other apparently happy, home-loving men turned to slaughter. The outcome of that debate will help shape how the whole of Britain copes with its future.

The conversation has a special urgency among British Muslims. Many feel implicated in the attacks carried out ostensibly in the name of their religion. Yet there is also anger — anger at the ignorance of some who view all Muslims as potential terrorists and, most bitter of all, at fellow Muslims who excuse or espouse terrorism. The London blasts exposed fault lines, not only between different ethnic identities but between generations and economic classes. In an effort to find a common front, 22 Muslim leaders and scholars issued a joint statement last week. They called the London attacks "utterly criminal, totally reprehensible, and absolutely un-Islamic." Sir Iqbal Sacranie, who heads the Muslim Council of Britain, an umbrella group with some 350 affiliated institutions, traveled to Leeds to talk to worshippers in one of the city's biggest mosques. Yet the visit, designed to heal wounds, was not a complete success. The Guardian reported that young men criticized Sacranie — who was recently knighted for "services to the Muslim community, to charity and to community relations" — for failing to seek them out during his visit. To be sure, the older generation has to find ways to reach out to kids who may otherwise fall prey to extremism, as the Muslim leaders' joint statement concluded. "The youth," it said, "need understanding, not bashing." But understanding is in short supply, even within families. Khaliq Ahmed, a taxi driver in Leeds, muses: "I'm British, you know. I live here. If I had to fight, I'd fight for my country. But my son, he's 18, and you know what he did? He had the word 'Pakistan' tattooed on his hand."

How can such young men be persuaded to identify with the place in which they live? The Muslim Association of Britain, which helped organize the "Don't Attack Iraq" antiwar marches in 2003, thinks that the more Muslim youth participate in the democratic process, the more they will display allegiance to Britain. The association has tried to mobilize Muslims to vote, an aim shared by Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding. Doyle thinks Muslims need to pool their resources — locally, regionally and nationally — to increase their clout. The Muslim community, he says, "is beginning to realize that they have a real part in the solution." Yet Muslim voter participation remains low, and there are only four Muslim Members of Parliament out of a total of 659 M.P.s. Prime Minister Tony Blair has done his best to ensure that the message from Britain's political leadership is positive. Last week, he described the 2.8% of the British population that is Islamic as "overwhelmingly law-abiding, decent members of our society." Blair told the House of Commons: "We are dealing not with an isolated criminal act but with an extreme and evil ideology, the roots of which lie in a perverted and poisonous misinterpretation of the religion of Islam." Muslims themselves, said Blair, had to take the lead in combating that ideology: "In the end, only the community itself can take on and defeat it, but we can all help and facilitate."