Anger Burns on the Fringe of Britain's Muslims
By HASSAN M. FATTAH
LEEDS, England, July 15 - At Beeston's Cross Flats Park, in the center of this now embattled town, Sanjay Dutt and his friends grappled Friday with why their friend Kakey, better known to the world as Shehzad Tanweer, had decided to become a suicide bomber.
"He was sick of it all, all the injustice and the way the world is going about it," Mr. Dutt, 22, said. "Why, for example, don't they ever take a moment of silence for all the Iraqi kids who die?"
"It's a double standard, that's why," answered a friend, who called himself Shahroukh, also 22, wearing a baseball cap and basketball jersey, sitting nearby. "I don't approve of what he did, but I understand it. You get driven to something like this, it doesn't just happen." ...
The bombers are an exception among Britain's 1.6 million Muslims. But their actions have highlighted a lingering question: why are second-generation British Muslims who should seemingly be farther up the road of assimilation rejecting the country in which they were born and raised?
Speak to young Muslims like Mr. Dutt and his friends in Leeds, or to others like Dr. Imram Waheed, 28, and Farouq Khan, 32, two Islamic activists living in Birmingham, another Muslim population center, and the answers seem clear. Each expresses the grievance in his own way, but the root is nearly the same.
They say they are weary of liberal Muslim leaders and British politicians who promise changes. They see them backing policies against the Muslim world in general, from Iraq to the Middle East to Afghanistan, and promising relief from economic distress and discrimination. Still, Britain's Muslims have languished near the bottom of society since their influx here in the 1950's.
"I know what people don't understand - it's how terrorists could have been born in this country," Shahroukh said. "But my point is, why not?" ...
What makes the message of conservative [Islamic] movements especially compelling ... is that they articulate the fundamental anger of many British Muslims that more mainstream movements seem incapable or unwilling to discuss.
That anger stems not merely from unhappiness with the situation of Muslims in Britain, but also solidarity with what they see as the aggressive and unjust treatment of Muslims abroad, and not least from Britain's part in the war in Iraq. ...
Carl