Be less perplexed if they understood Islam. B http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/world/europe/09glasgow.html?_r=1 <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/world/europe/09glasgow.html?_r=1&oref=slo gin&ref=world&pagewanted=print> &oref=slogin&ref=world&pagewanted=print Terror in Glasgow? Scots Are Perplexed By SERGE F. KOVALESKI and ARIANA GREEN
GLASGOW, July 8 - Compared with suspects in past terrorist attacks, the eight held in connection with the bungled bombings here and in London gravitated to the most unlikely places in Britain, from quaint communities in the English Midlands and the suburbs of Glasgow to the university town of Cambridge. There has even been a connection to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where authorities had lowered their guard against sectarian terrorism only to find evidence now of a new kind of threat. Following the fiery Jeep attack on Glasgow's airport eight days ago, much of Scotland has been thrust into stunned self-reflection, having felt that Glasgow was a city that terrorists would not bother to attack while concentrating their attention on prominent international centers like London and New York. Evoking a sharpening sense of separateness dating back centuries, the columnist Iain Macwhirter described Scotland's identity crisis in the newspaper The Herald two days after the attack: "Scotland has been left with a sense of 'why us?' We're different, aren't we? We're not really a part of the Anglo-American military axis. A small nation, subordinated to a larger partner in the U.K., too marginal to bomb." Mr. Macwhirter further wrote: "Terrorists tend to target the centers of government and the media because that's where they get the maximum bang for their buck. It's where government ministers take the decisions on war and peace and where the centers of finance are located." In Scotland, that would be Edinburgh, not Glasgow, where just last month the Scottish National Party took power, deepening the notion that Scotland's destiny has diverged from England's. No matter that the two were in fact further intertwined with the ascent last month of <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/gordon_brown/i ndex.html?inline=nyt-per> Gordon Brown, a Scot, as prime minister. Outside Glasgow, in the village of Houston, where the two men in the Jeep Cherokee - Bilal Abdulla and Kafeel Ahmed - are believed to have lived in a house on a placid cul-de-sac, residents were grappling with the fact that terrorism might have reached their doorstep. They pointed out that Houston is a comfortable, idyllic bedroom community, made up of a large number of teachers, doctors and other professionals, where horseback riders trot through the old town center and parents go fishing with their children. "We have lost our innocence," said Rose Morrison, 48, a waitress at the Fox and Hounds pub in Houston for 22 years. "Even this lovely village is vulnerable. It is indeed a new day for us." As her eyes welled with tears, Ms. Morrison said that she had felt happily anonymous before her community became part of the terrorism investigation. "London is a big international city," she said. "Nobody knew about us up here." Except for the bombing of <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/pan_am_fligh t_103/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988, which was not believed to be directed at the Scottish, Scotland has been largely free of the kind of terrorist acts that have plagued England. Experts contended that the <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/i/irish_r epublican_army/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Irish Republican Army, for instance, never unleashed its terrorist tactics in Scotland because the group seemed to believe that Scotland, like Northern Ireland, was under England's control and could not control London's military policies. In contrast to England's Muslim population, Scotland's is well integrated into society and much smaller, about 60,000 people. According to the Muslim Council of Britain, 1.54 million Muslims live in England and Wales. Trevor Royle, a military historian and the author of several books, said in an interview that Scotland's Muslims gave people "no reason to worry about a threat." "They were merchants and businessmen, with no links to the firebrand types," Mr. Royle said. "So far the investigation has proved us right. There is a feeling that we are going to get on with our lives." For the most part, the seven men and one woman arrested as part of the investigation into the botched bombings were educated, middle-class Muslims who lived transient lifestyles in Britain. A number of the places they chose to live are evocative of old establishment Britain and a far cry from communities like East London or Birmingham, where large numbers of Muslims reside. On the other hand, the quiet and prosperous places seemed like communities where doctors and engineers would want to live. Ian Davidson, a Labor member of the British Parliament, said the brain drain to North America had created opportunities for a new generation of immigrants in Scotland. "We seem to be short of medical staff in particular because the United States and Canada poach," he said. "So we have a lot of well-educated people coming here." At the time of their arrest, two of the suspects, Mohammed Asha and his wife, Marwa Younis, were living in the largely white town of Newcastle-Under-Lyme, in the English Midlands, after moving from Shrewsbury in Shropshire, where their landlord said Ms. Younis had been the target of racism. Previously, Mr. Asha, Dr. Abdulla, Mr. Ahmed and perhaps some of the other detainees had spent time in Cambridge. Mr. Ahmed is also believed to have spent three years in Belfast, where he graduated from Queens University with a master's degree in aeronautical engineering in 2003. So far Dr. Abdulla is the only suspect to have been charged by British authorities, and many questions persist about the links among all the detainees. Asked to explain why relations in general between Muslims and non-Muslims in Scotland seem more harmonious than in London, Naim Raza, the president of the Islamic Society of Glasgow, said that Scots also viewed themselves as a minority. "They had a different attitude about accepting another minority," Mr. Raza said of the Scots. "It's been a lot easier for them to relate to us, and for us to embrace Scotland." Still, Bashir Maan, the first Muslim elected to the Glasgow City Council, said that such peace had been strained in recent years. A March 2005 article in the Sunday Herald quoted Muslim leaders complaining that airport authorities detained passengers arriving here on a direct flight from Peshawar, Pakistan, interrogated them for hours about any links to terrorist groups, then released them without charges. A year earlier, tensions between whites and non-native Muslims were much higher after the killing of a 15-year-old white student named Kriss Donald by three men described as Pakistani gang members. Mr. Maan said nationalist political groups put the murder at the center of their campaigns against <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/immigration_ and_refugees/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> immigration, and they urged the victim's mother to become a spokeswoman. The mother refused, Mr. Maan said, saying that she harbored no grudges against Pakistanis. Mr. Maan recalled that Pakistani leaders in Glasgow reciprocated by pressing the Pakistani government to extradite the suspects, who had fled Scotland. Imran Shahid, considered the leader of the attack, was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to 25 years in prison. When the Glasgow airport was attacked last weekend, Mr. Maan said that he didn't want to believe that the people who were responsible could have come from this community. But he could not be sure. "When something like this happens out of nowhere, you don't know what to make of it, whether it could be one of our boys," he said. "But there is no radicalization of the Muslim community here. There are complaints, but no radicalization." [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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