Muslims Condemn Terror

Muslims Condemn Terror Plots

Dallas, Texas
July 3, 2007.

The World Muslim Congress condemns this act of terror listed below. The criminals are on their own and must be punished to the maximum extent the law allows.

Saving one life is like saving the whole humanity, says the Qur'aan. These criminals have committed double crime, the first one is the crime itself, and the second one is maligning the name of a religion.

The civil society should avoid giving a religious label to the criminals as their religion does not support them. They should be tried for murder and treason. By giving them a religious label, we will be making a mistake in honoring the crime that those criminals did for the sake of religion. No they did not and their acts are shameful.

There is no support of these acts by Muslims around the world.

Mike Ghouse, President,
World Muslim Congress.
http://www.worldmuslimcongress.com/


Doctors at heart of U.K. terror plots
By Mark Landler and Sarah Lyall
Published: July 3, 2007
http://iht.com/articles/2007/07/03/europe/britain.php

LONDON: The eight people arrested in the aftermath of two bungled car bombings here last week are from the medical profession, a British police official said Tuesday, giving the plot a starkly different dimension than previous acts of Islamic terrorism in Britain.

The seven men are physicians, the official said on condition of anonymity, while the lone woman, the wife of one of them, is a medical technician.

For the public, the idea that well-educated professionals could mutate into terrorists in white lab coats is a baffling departure from the home-grown Muslim terrorists, many with family roots in Pakistan, who have been implicated in previous conspiracies here.

Britain remained on edge Tuesday, with the police evacuating a terminal at Heathrow airport outside London after a security scare, stranding hundreds of passengers outside in a pelting rainstorm. They also carried out "controlled explosions" near a subway station here and outside a mosque in Glasgow.

Separately, the police arrested two men on suspicion of terrorism after reports that canisters of gas were delivered to an industrial site in Blackburn in northwest England. Police officials would not say whether the arrests were linked to the incidents in London and Glasgow, in which gas canisters also were used.

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Ten people have now been detained in Britain and Australia since two car bombs, which failed to detonate, were discovered in the West End of London early Friday morning. The next day, two men rammed an SUV into the entrance of Glasgow Airport and set fire to the vehicle.

As an intense, nationwide investigation continued, the British authorities were confronted with the possibility that a network composed of foreign professionals had taken root at home, inside the publicly financed National Health Service.

The National Health Service has relied on foreign doctors to meet staffing shortfalls, and foreign doctors have been drawn to its relatively generous salaries and thorough standards of training. Of the nearly 239,000 doctors now registered with the General Medical Council, about 90,000 of them qualified in countries other than Britain.

But the service was thrown off balance Tuesday with the reports that the suspects in the failed car bombings in Glasgow and London work in the medical profession.

While the authorities try to determine when and how all the suspects met - and whether they knew one another before coming to Britain or became radicalized once they got here - doctors said they were horrified at the thought that members of their profession might be involved in the plot.

While foreign doctors must pass a series of tests to prove their medical qualifications and fitness to practice, the rules were tightened last year. Now, most foreign doctors are required to obtain work permits for specific jobs before practicing in Britain, significantly reducing their chances of finding work.

The authorities said they believed that at least two of the suspects in the case - Bilal Abdullah and Mohammed Asha - had come to Britain before the new law took effect.

Prasad Rao, chairman of the British International Doctors' Association, called the apparent link to terrorism "beyond belief."

"Even if I were to come across my enemy, my duty is to heal the sick," he said. "How could I remotely plan to kill and maim innocent people? I have no words to describe this."
Doctors from foreign countries are required to pass a number of hurdles before earning the right to work in Britain.

First, they must prove that they have graduated from a medical school deemed acceptable by the World Health Organization. They have to undergo identity checks; pass an exam to prove their proficiency in English; provide a certificate of good standing from the medical regulatory body in their home country; and pass a two-part exam to demonstrate their medical skills and knowledge.

After foreign doctors receive job offers, they are granted the right to work and train for up to 18 months or so, after which their status is reviewed.

Some experts discounted the theory that the suspects were sent to infiltrate Britain's medical system by Al Qaeda.

"It's farcical that Al Qaeda, with its huge experience in explosives, would have sent them if they didn't know how to do it," said Sajjan Gohel, a terrorism expert at the Asia-Pacific Foundation. "These people were not preplanned and sent here. They were radicalized here."

There are more than 5,000 registered doctors from Middle Eastern countries in Britain, according to the General Medical Council, and almost 2,000 from Iraq. Abdullah, for instance, is an Iraqi who trained at Baghdad University and worked at a hospital in Scotland.

One of the eight arrested was an Indian doctor who was about to board a plane in Brisbane, Australia. Mohammed Haneef is being investigated in connection with terror activities, the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

But Keelty stressed three times in the interview that Haneef "may have done nothing wrong and may at the end of the day be free to go."

The premier of Queensland, Peter Beattie, said Haneef, who worked at a hospital on Australia's Gold Coast, "was regarded by the hospital as a model citizen with excellent references."
The British police have been granted the authority to extend the detention of three of the suspects who were taken into custody over the weekend.

Tensions remained high in Scotland. The Royal Alexandra Hospital, where at least one of the suspects was employed, was under heavy police guard Tuesday morning.

Muslim leaders in Britain have condemned the plot promptly and vigorously. But some fret that a backlash is inevitable. Omara Saeed, a leader in the Muslim community in Glasgow, said that vandals drove a car into a Muslim-owned grocery store in a northeast section of the city on Monday night.

Also Monday night, the police impounded a car in the parking lot of a Glasgow mosque as part of the investigation into the airport attack. Bomb experts set off a controlled explosion in the car and forensic officials were searching it for evidence, a police spokeswoman said. Khaliq Ansari, secretary of the Noor Mosque, said the police told him the vehicle belonged to one of the four suspects arrested in connection with the Glasgow attacks.

A similar exercise was carried out on a suspicious package in London, near the Hammersmith subway station. "It turned out to be nothing in the end," a spokesman for the British Transport Police said.

At Heathrow airport, a security alert caused mayhem in Terminal 4, the main international terminal for British Airways. After the authorities discovered a suspicious package just before midday, they evacuated the departure zone, forcing passengers onto the sidewalks outside. The public was allowed back into the building at 5 p.m.

British Airways canceled 108 flights to Europe, while arriving planes languished for hours on the tarmac.

Alan Cowell, Raymond Bonner and Stephen Castle in London, and Victoria Burnett in Glasgow contributed reporting.