“The London bombings pose stark dilemmas for those on the left and British Muslims in particular. The vast majority of us believe in allowing people to express their differences and practice their culture and religion, without being pushed into one set of homogenous thoughts. Should those freedoms be surrendered by supporting some of the measures being proposed by Tony Blair? Is it really credible to suppose that we should forget the international policy issues bound up in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Kashmir?

“The media (left and right) seem to think that what happened on July 7th is all to do with Islam and that Muslims want to impose their way of life in the west, destroy our liberal democracies and want to oppress women, and they think that the Hijab is a sign of that. That is just plain wrong. The lessons of history highlight the perils of targeting a religious group through propaganda.”

Yasmin Qureshi in Chartist, September/October 2005