In Both Sorrow and Anger

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Yet if a spirit of self-examination is to really take root among British Muslims, what happens in the arenas of high politics is less important than the everyday chats in mosques and youth clubs. "That atrocity broke our hearts," says Mohammed Kozbar, spokesman for the North London Central Mosque in Finsbury Park. "I've been shocked and surprised by the news that these young people are British Muslims." Until early 2003, the radical Egyptian-born cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri was the imam at Finsbury Park, reeling in enthusiastic young followers with his fiery sermons. Now Abu Hamza is awaiting trial on charges that include stirring racial hatred, and a gentler brand of Islam is drawing people back to the mosque. "We have a responsibility as a community," says Kozbar. "We have to ask ourselves how these people grew up in such an atmosphere, and from where they got this ideology that they can kill people. We have to educate young Muslims. Islam does not give the right to kill anyone." Kozbar ticks off a list of the possible causes of alienation that might make Muslims prey to the politics of hatred: discrimination, poverty and "foreign issues like Iraq and Palestine." Still, he continues, "these issues do not justify acting in this way."

It's easy to get British Muslims to agree on one thing; few seem to view U.S. foreign policy with anything but despair. High profile gaffes feed a sense that the U.S. is insensitive to Muslim views, as when the plane carrying Yusuf Islam, better known as the rock star Cat Stevens, was diverted to Bangor, Maine, on its way to Washington from London in September 2004 because his name turned up on a watch list of people with suspected ties to terrorists. Just last week, Zaki Badawi, an internationally renowned British Muslim scholar and the moderate head of London's Muslim College, was denied entry to the U.S. after his plane landed in New York.

Back at home, British Muslims have their grievances, and the list just got longer. In a development that was, perhaps, sadly inevitable, the London bombings ignited a spate of racist attacks. Several mosques were firebombed or had their windows smashed; there were incidents of abuse, threats and assaults. A 48-year-old Muslim man, Kamal Raza Butt, died, allegedly after being set upon by a mixedrace gang of youths in Nottingham. For the friends of Tanweer, such actions may just confirm their diagnosis of the ills of Western society. The boys on the street may be bewildered by his actions, but they are not slow to speculate what motivated him. One young man in Beeston thought that the roots of Tanweer's rage lay in "the persecution of Muslims worldwide" and the slaughter of innocents in Palestine and Iraq. "Wouldn't you want to fight if you saw your brotherhood, children and babies attacked?" he said.

That view is not limited to Leeds. In Southall Broadway, west London, Sarfraz Hussain, 24, helps his uncle run the Kashmir Karahi restaurant. "People here are getting angry because of what's happening in other countries," such as Afghanistan and Iraq, he says. "For years now, no one has been listening to the Muslims. They're trying to get out a message because they're suffering so much and no one is listening. And that's why [the bombers] probably thought, 'We've got no other way to get our message across.' Ordinary people just got caught up." But Hussain knows that anger isn't the answer. "You have to think, what has this bombing changed?' It hasn't driven the Israelis out of Palestine, it hasn't solved anything in Iraq. It's just made it worse for the British people," he says. "Now if I go and apply for a job, employers might think, 'We don't want this person, he's a terrorist.'"

That facile conclusion is one that Muslim organizations are determined to combat. Fadi Itani, executive director of the Muslim Welfare House in Finsbury Park, says adamantly: "[The bombers] acted on their own. They didn't ask us if they could do this. We condemned it before and we condemn it even more now. Every community has criminals. The question is, what can we all do? We have to be hard on terrorism and the roots of terrorism. When the I.R.A. was bombing London, no one was saying all Catholics were to blame." Says Doyle: "This is not a war between the West and Islam — it is between those who want to live normally and peacefully and those who don't." Yet no matter how many call for British Islam to rid itself of the ideologists of hate, the truth remains that few yet know why some of their youngsters feel the way they do. "There's definitely something about the younger generation," says Ahmed, the Leeds taxi driver. "They feel under attack, and I don't know why." And while that sense of victimization continues, there will always be those who are prepared to understand those who commit horrible acts of violence. In Luton, where the three bombers from Leeds met up with the fourth to continue their journey to London, a redbearded Swede stands outside the Central Mosque. A convert to Islam, he declares: "There's no way I'm going to condemn my brothers over this." The conversation within British Islam has a long way to go.