Muslims of Scotland nervous after airport attack

Glasgow, Scotland, July 4: An attack on an Asian-owned shop in the city of Glasgow raised the spectre of reprisals against Muslims as police investigate a suspected al Qaeda plot in London and Scotland.

Scotland's 50,000 Muslims have long been among the best integrated and most successful immigrant communities in Britain but the strike on Glasgow airport on Saturday by two men in a fuel-packed jeep has been a jolt to the system.

It was the first attack blamed on Islamist militants to hit Scotland, after a series of suicide bombings and failed plots that have mostly been centred on Britain's capital London.

Then early today, attackers rammed a car into an Asian-owned shop in the Glasgow suburb of Riddrie and set it ablaze. Residents fear it was revenge for the airport strike.

''That is what I thought myself. It might have been racially done because of what happened at Glasgow airport,'' said Frank Mattheson, a pensioner, who bought his daily newspaper there.

All eight of those arrested so far over the attack in Scotland and two thwarted car bombs in London have been foreigners, not British-born Muslims like the suicide bombers who killed 52 people on London transport two years ago.

Educated, Affluent, Established

Scotland's own newly-elected regional boss Alex Salmond, a Scottish nationalist who wants to secede from Britain, visited a mosque the day after the attack. He stressed that the attackers were believed to be foreigners and not ''Scottish Muslims''.

''There have been riots in England. There have been attacks in England. But we never expected that up here,'' Bashir Maan, chairman of Glasgow's central mosque, told Reuters.

''This is a (Muslim) community which is educated, which is affluent, which is very well established here, having very good relations with the local people. We have businessmen who employ hundreds of local Scots,'' he said.

''There are no radical elements here.'' Neighbours in Riddrie spoke highly of the newsagent's owner, a Muslim who has operated the shop for about nine years.

''Poor Shafiq,'' said Helen Kent, a civil servant. ''Lovely man. He has raised a lot of money for local charities. Targeting him it's not on.'' She said she hoped the attack was not racially motivated: ''I would like to think it is not going to start up here. We have all got on.'' Mohammed Ramzan, known in the neighbourhood as Sam, who owns another newsagents a block away, said he was moving out his valuable and important documents as a precaution.

''I can't leave it there overnight,'' he said.

As he spoke to a reporter he warmly greeted several locals as they walked by. ''I have seen them all grow. I know all of their kids as well. We have never had anything like this.'' Elsewhere there were signs of the simmering tension.

In Bathgate, near Scotland's capital Edinburgh, an estate agent's office was hit by a petrol bomb late on Sunday or early on Monday.

''There's a mosque up the stairs next door to us and it looks like somebody tried to set fire to the mosque,'' the proprietor, Bert McLeod, told sources.

''A lot of the Muslims who frequent the mosque were in the office yesterday conveying their sympathies, which was very much appreciated. Things like this don't happen in Bathgate.'' Outside one of the houses being searched by police, a car pulled up and a middle-aged man leaned out the window and shouted: ''Send them all back home!''

Reuters

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