UK Laws Alienate Muslims: Police Officer

"I have been deliberately excluded from groups, processes and decision-making on occasions," Ghaffur will say.

"There is a very real danger that the counter-terrorism label is also being used by other law enforcement agencies to the effect that there is a real risk of criminalizing minority communities," Tarique Ghaffur, Assistant Commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police Force, will tell a National Black Police Association conference in Manchester.

"Not only has anti-terrorism and security legislation been tightened across many European countries with the effect of indirectly discriminating against Muslims, but other equally unwanted practices have also emerged, including 'passenger profiling' as well as increased stop and search and arrest under terrorism legislation."

Many European countries, particularly Britain, have tightened up anti-terror laws in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

British Muslims have repeatedly complained of maltreatment by police for no apparent reason other than being Muslim, citing the routine stop-and-search operations.

"These practices tend to be based more on physical appearance than being intelligence-led," Ghaffur will say.

People with Asian appearance have borne the full brunt of the stop-and-search practice, which the British police claim is "intelligence-led".

There are some 1.8 million Muslims in Britain, many with roots in South Asia.

Criminalize

Ghaffur, Britain's highest-ranking Muslim police officer, will warn that more work is needed to stop the "flight, fright or separation" of the Muslim minority after the July 7 attacks in London.

He will also caution that police practices run a real risk of criminalizing ethnic minorities in Britain.

Ghaffur will say that hundreds of arrests for terror charges since 9/11 attacks, with relatively few convictions, have created "a strong feeling of mass stereotyping with the Muslim community and in fact the wider non-Muslim south Asian communities".

He goes on: "The impact of this will be that just at the time we need the confidence and trust of these communities, they may retreat inside themselves."

Continuous police operations, searches and arrests, and the extended period which suspects can be held without charge, has entrenched fear in the Muslim community that it is being targeted.

A recent massive police raid on a Muslim house in east London has broadened a confidence gap between Muslims the police.

Two young Muslim brothers, one of whom was shot during the raid, were arrested and then later released without charge. Police admitted the operation was based on wrong intelligence.

"We therefore need proper accountability and transparency round all policy and direction that affects communities," Ghaffur will say.

Root Causes

The top Muslim officer will also call for a public inquiry into root causes pushing some young Muslims to extremism.

"We must think long and hard about the causal factors of anger and resentment. In particular, we need to adopt an evidence-based approach to building solutions."

Survivors and relatives of the victims of the 7/7 London bombings, carried out by four British Muslims, have long demanded a public inquiry but the government has argued it would be a distraction for the security services.

Chief Superintendent Ali Dizaei of London police also said it was time to assess what impact events in the Middle East, anti-terrorism laws and social disadvantages had on radicalizing some young Muslims.

"That's why Mr Ghaffur is saying, let's look at an inquiry, let's find out whether this is actually taking place and if it is what we can do about it," he told BBC radio.

The British parliament's influential Foreign Affairs Committee concluded on Sunday, July 2, that international conflicts, such as the situation in Iraq and the occupied Palestinian territories, breed feelings of injustice in the Muslim world which can boost support for terrorism.

The socio-economic factor also plays a key role in alienating British Muslims.

A recent study, conducted by university researchers in Birmingham, Derby, Oxford and Warwick, said 14 percent of Muslims aged over 25 were unemployed, compared with the national unemployment rate of 4 percent.

It also found Muslims had poorer levels of education and were more vulnerable to long-term illness.

Discrimination

The Muslim officer will also call for tackling discrimination within the police ranks, which has harmed his police career.

"I have been deliberately excluded from groups, processes and decision-making on occasions," he will say.

"I have had creative ideas turned down, only for them to then be subsequently suggested by colleagues and accepted."

Ghaffur will say that ethnic minority officers face an ever-present "miasma" or "toxic fog" of "misperceptions and distorted accounts of their behavior from colleagues".

Last year the Muslim officer failed in his bid to become deputy commissioner of the Met, and before that was unsuccessful in applying to the chief constable of the next three biggest forces in England and Wales, namely Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and West Midlands.

"Each process attracted unfair media attention, had no true level of independence and basically amounted to informal appraisal of me as an individual rather than a proper assessment of my experiences and competencies," he will say.