Muslims fear backlash while dealing with their own grief over attacks

LONDON – The weekly ritual of Friday prayers gave London’s 600,000 Muslims their first public opportunity to grieve after terrorist bombs ripped through the city a day earlier. A weeping man and his white-bearded father, sharing their sorrows with other worshippers at one of the city’s biggest mosques, showed the Muslim community had as much to mourn as any other Londoners.

Most Muslim Londoners are worried that their community could be blamed for the al Qaeda-style terrorist attacks. But Shamsul Islam and his father had a more personal grief and fear, as they prayed at the East London Mosque just a few hundred yards from Aldgate underground station where the first blast went off Thursday.

Islam’s 23-year-old daughter, Shahara Akta Islam, left home for Aldgate station on Thursday morning but never reached work. She carried two mobile phones, but she has not called. Her father, now making the lonely round of calls to hospitals, fears the worst.

The story of Shahara shows the dilemma faced by some Muslim Londoners: their awareness that they are both targets of terrorism, because they are Londoners, while perceived as being responsible for it, because they are Muslim.

With tears rolling down his cheeks, Shamsul Islam talked of his hatred of the terrorists. “These people are not human beings. They probably think they are Muslims, but they are not doing anything for Islam,” Islam told the British Broadcasting Corp., his voice breaking.

His father, trying to explain how he had hugged Shahara as a little girl, found himself trembling and unable to speak.

Muslims make up 9 percent of the city’s population, and almost all the attacks took place near districts where Muslim Londoners are concentrated. Although Muslim associations said earlier they believed there must be Muslim victims of the blasts, few names of dead or missing people have been released.

The Muslim Council of Britain umbrella organization has received thousands of hate e-mails from people believed to be right-wing extremists threatening revenge. The umbrella organization’s secretary-general, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, said: “One, which is particularly awful, reads, ‘It’s now war on Muslims throughout Britain.’ “

Two Muslim social organizations have advised members – especially women in headscarves – not to travel or go out unless it was necessary. But the larger, more mainstream Muslim Council of Britain, urged Muslims to carry on as usual.

“Our faith of Islam calls upon us to be upholders of justice. The day after London was bloodied by terrorists finds us determined to help secure this justice for the innocent victims of yesterday’s carnage. The terrorists may have thought they could divide us and make us panic. It is our hope that we will all prove them conclusively wrong,” Sacranie said.

The risk of a backlash was serious enough for Home Secretary Charles Clarke to meet Sacranie to discuss how to defuse tensions.

After prayers at the East London mosque, Muslim leaders joined Hindus, Sikhs, Jews and Christians in a somber procession down Whitechapel Road to stand vigil at Aldgate subway station and commemorate the victims.

At the towering copper-domed Regent’s Park Mosque in central London, where thousands of men in caps and bare feet gathered for Friday prayers, Sheikh Ashraf Salah said: “Any attack is an attack on us all. We are so sorry that this attack is attached to Muslims. We cannot imagine that a true Muslim who understands properly the teachings of Islam can commit this terrible crime against civilians and the innocent. Islam strongly condemns such a sinful act.”

A dozen police stood outside. Yet the believers drifting out of Regent’s Park mosque as prayers ended remained anxious.

Egyptian-born Nefisa Ahmed, 46, a small woman in ankle-length skirt, white headscarf and spectacles, has lived in London for 27 years and raised her three children here. But she said she now feels uneasy on the street for the first time.

“Some people see scarves and say this is terror, Arab, Muslim,” she said in accented English. “Not educated people, but a minority. Today I feel it – looks, whispers. Today I don’t want to go out.”