[b]
Britons See Islam Threat to West: Poll[/b]

By Mohammed Sabry, IOL Staff

"British Muslims are portrayed in the tabloid newspapers that they want to kill Christians, unwilling to integrate and want to enforce the Sharia`h law in the UK," Bunglawala said.

CAIRO — More than a half of Britons see Islam poses a threat to the West and believe Britain is facing a "Muslim problem", according to a poll published in The Daily Telegraph on Friday, August 25.

Some 53 percent of 1,757 respondents to the YouGov survey said that Islam was a threat to Western liberal democracy compared to less than a third following the 9/11 attacks.

Some 18 percent of those surveyed also believe that a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to Britain and are prepared to condone or carry out acts of terrorism; a percentage that is up from only 10 percent a year ago.

An ICM survey has earlier found that a sweeping majority of 91 percent of British Muslims was "loyal" to Britain and 80 percent still wanted to live in and accept Western society.

The YouGov survey also found that Britons who believe that British Muslims were peaceful and law-abiding citizens who deplore terrorist acts dropped to only 16 percent compared to 23 percent last year.

A sweeping majority of respondents, 65 percent, said that security services should focus their intelligence gathering and anti-terrorism efforts on Muslims, up from 60 percent a year ago.

The poll comes after British police foiled an alleged plot to blow up US-bound flights and arrested 24 people, mostly Muslims of Pakistani origin.

It also comes a year after the London terrorist attacks, which left 56 people killed including four home-grown Muslims.

British Muslims, estimated at some 1.8 million or nearly three percent of the population, had denounced in unison the grisly London attacks, saying there was no justification whatsoever to take innocent lives.

[b]Media Faulted[/b]

"The media has been working to create a climate which is full of fear and apprehension," Tamimi said.

British Muslims said the results were not surprising, blaming some right-wing British media outlets for continuingly demonizing Muslims.

"Unfortunately, the findings are not surprising," Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, told IslamOnline.net over the phone.

"British Muslims are portrayed in the tabloid and right-wing newspapers that they want to kill Christians, unwilling to integrate and want to enforce the Sharia`h law in the UK."

Azzam Tamimi, director of the London-based Islamic Political Thought Institute, agreed.

"The results are not surprising as the media has been working to create a climate which is full of fear and apprehension, especially in societies where Islam is not well understood and under the war on terror which would make the public anticipates Islam as a threat," he said.

Tamimi also faulted practices of some Muslims which have tarnished the image of Islam.

[b]Civil Liberties[/b]

The poll also revealed strong opposition to racial profiling of passengers at the airports, which Muslims see as expected.

"People are against any attempt to limit their civil liberties which are highly regarded here," Tamimi said.

He stressed that the public believe any attempt to enforce racial profiling against Muslims could be applied to other groups across the country.

Bunglawala echoed a similar conviction.

"People recognize that racial profiling is not going to work," he noted.

According to media reports, the Blair government is discussing with airport authorities a system of profiling — where security staff focus their search efforts on people they regard as suspicious on grounds such as ethnicity and religion.

British Muslims have reacted angrily the reported plans, saying that such a "terror profile" mounted to racism.

Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent Ali Desai, one of Britain's top Muslim police officers, has said that he feared the xenophobia could lead to a new offence in Britain called "traveling whilst Asian."