India:India's Muslims are dismayed at being linked to a terror plot, writes Rahul Bediin Bangalore.
Indian Muslims have reacted adversely to the arrest of three of their co-religionists in connection with last weekend's abortive terrorist attack at Glasgow airport.
It is the first time their community has been associated with al-Qaeda, and many members of what is India's largest minority said it was difficult for them to accept that Indian Muslims could be linked to any international terror plot.
"Racial profiling of Muslims as terrorists is a dangerous trend. It can demoralise an entire community already in ferment," housewife Ayesha Ashraf said yesterday.
With more than 140 million members, India boasts the world's second largest Muslim population after Indonesia.
Unlike other predominantly Islamic societies, Indian Muslims have remained detached from al-Qaeda - a point that was noted globally and frequently reiterated by the federal authorities.
But Indian security agencies said their British and Australian counterparts were increasingly concerned over the recruitment of highly educated and professional Muslims by Laskar-e-Taiba (LeT or Army of the Pure), an affiliate of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front, which is based outside the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore.
They also do not rule out the arrested bombers in London having links with these organisations whose tentacles spread wide through the Muslim community overseas.
"Typically, their cells comprise four or five closely knit members, often family, making it almost impossible to infiltrate or even get close to," a senior Indian security official said. The three Indians being detained for questioning in Britain and Australia "typify" such a group, he added.
Elaborating further, the official, who declined to be named, said in early 2005 the UK authorities had charged a British national with conspiring to fund the LeT's jihad in India's northern disputed Kashmir province.
Soon after, Australia prosecuted Sydney-based Pakistani medical student Izhar ul-Haque for training with the LeT, established in 1987 by engineering professor Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who believes that the necessity for jihad has always existed.
Saeed considers democracy to be one of the "menaces" inherited from an alien government and strives to achieve Muslim unity through religious motivation.
Another LeT-linked terrorist of Pakistani origin, Fahim Khalid Lodhi, conspired to bomb Australia's electricity grid last year, while similar use of the LeT as an al-Qaeda-led front emerged in France recently.
This came to light after a French court convicted Pakistani national Ghulam Rana, along with two locals , Hakim Mokhfi and Hassan al-Cheguer, of channelling money through a humanitarian-front organisation.
And in the US, cleric Ali al-Timmi was found to have inspired several followers to train at a LeT camp in Pakistan.
Meanwhile, the publicity surrounding the three Muslims from Bangalore is threatening to sour diplomatic relations between India and Britain.
"I am against labelling of any terrorist by nationality," prime minister Manmohan Singh said yesterday after speaking with his counterpart Gordon Brown, to whom he conveyed his dismay over the negative publicity being given to Indian Muslims.
"I could not sleep after watching the arrested boys' mother being interviewed on television," Singh said.