UK warned against profiling Muslim travellers

By IRNA,

London : Prime Minister Gordon Brown was warned Saturday by one of the founders of a government-funded counter-extremism think-tank that profiling Muslim travellers at British airports would be “wrong, flawed, and will make matters worse.”

“This mindset not only fails to understand that most Muslims around the world detest al-Qaeda, but this outlook also cannot comprehend how terrorists are always one step ahead of the game,” said Ed Husain, who helped to create the Quilliam Foundation.

“The profiling of ordinary Muslims not only opens other avenues for al-Qaeda, but results in the harassment and potential loss of support from the very people we need on our side to contain al-Qaeda: ordinary Muslims,” Husain warned.

In his New Year message, Brown announced an urgent review of airport security would be made after the latest alleged attempt to blow up a transatlantic jet on Christmas Day, prompting fears that British Muslims will be singled out for increasing security checks.

He said new detection techniques would be considered for UK airports including the use of full body scanners travellers but because of the costs, it is expected that passengers will be selected for enhanced checks based on race, religion and ethnicity.

Britain’s two million Muslim community already faces intense surveillance under the government’s counter-terrorism policies, including being disproportionately singled out in police stop-and-searches.

Husein described the failed attack at Detroit airport as “a much-needed excuse for some agenda-driven American ideologues to demand opening ‘new fronts’ in the ‘war on terror’.”

“Time and again, from September 11 to the attempted Detroit-bound airline attack last week, there are Saudi fingerprints – ideological and practical – on terrorist attacks and yet western powers stab in the dark," he said in an article for the Guardian newspaper.

The Quilliam Foundation has been largely discredited since being set up in 2007 by members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, arguing for the creation of a new “Western Islam” and subsequently receiving government funding.