LONDON, March 30 (IslamOnline.net) - Muslims in Britain are complaining that they are maltreated by police stop-and-search operations under the Terrorism Act for no apparent reason other than being Muslim, a leading British daily reported on Monday, March 29.

The police action is sweeping and targeting even those who lived in the United Kingdom for decades and have never broken the law in anyway, The Guardian said.

There is a growing number of complaints from Muslim citizens against being stopped in the street, their cars, having their homes searched, or pulled over for questioning at airports or ferry terminals.

Ruhul Tarafder, campaigns coordinator for the human rights organization 1990 Trust, said Muslims from 14 years old and upwards had come to view being stopped by the police as part of normal life.

"No real reasons were given, though anti-terrorist legislation was frequently cited," he told the daily.

His findings are based on research he carried out Last November and December in Tower Hamlets, east London, and in Westminster, where he discovered many Muslims who had had bad experiences with the police.

"Often it was when they were wearing traditional clothes or if they had Muslim-style beards. Muslims understand there is a security threat but it doesn't mean they should be treated unfairly," Tarafder said.

"There is worrying evidence it is being abused by police to harass ordinary citizens," he said, blaming anti-terrorist legislation for giving rise to Islamophobia.

Leroy Logan of the Black Police Officers Association added: "What we are hearing gives us a worrying sense that section 44 [of the anti-terrorist legislation] is being used by police disproportionately."

The chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, Massoud Shadjareh, said police concentration on Muslims was racist and counterproductive, as it alienated the very community police needed to help defeat terrorism, the paper said.

Attributing the sharp rise in discrimination cases to the 9/11 attacks, Shadjareh said Home Office figures showed that in 2002-03 there were 32,100 searches overall under the Terrorism Act.

"I recently gave a workshop in Luton and of 12 people in the group, seven had been stopped and searched by police. Often, they are people who have lived in the UK for decades and have never broken the law in any way," Shadjareh told the paper.

A Guardian/ICM poll conducted after the Madrid blasts showed, however, that 50 percent of the British public see that the government is handling the so-called war on terrorism "fairly well".