Leader comment: Attacks on Muslims are fuelling further terror threat

A backlash against the Muslim community in the United Kingdom has been feared since the recent terrorist atrocities in Manchester and London, and the sickening attack on Muslims leaving a mosque after evening prayers represents confirmation of current tensions.

Onlookers watch proceedings at the security cordon at Finsbury Park after a vehicle plunged into people near a mosque.

For all the efforts made to bring communities and faiths together in the fight against terrorism, there are people in the UK who do not want to know, have no interest in reason, and will use a terror attack on this country as justification for exercising their prejudice.

This kind of response plays into the hands of those who want to attack Britain and destroy our way of life. Attacks that are claimed to be made in the name of Islam are intended to cause maximum damage, but they are also designed to create division, encouraging some misguided elements of society to believe that the Muslim community is the enemy within.

In reality, Muslims are an integral part of our society and our economy, the vast majority of them wanting nothing more than the opportunity to get on with their normal lives. If anything, they loathe extremists more than anyone else does, because their conduct feeds the Islamophobia that results in reprisals such as the attack at Finsbury Park. Not only are Muslims at risk of a terror attack on the general public, they are also at risk of being attacked in retaliation. It is a desperate position to be in, and the fear within Muslim families and communities is growing.

Sadly, a report published yesterday by the Scottish Police Authority has shown that Islamophobia has a grip in Scotland, with an increase in attacks on the Muslim community recorded in Edinburgh after the 2015 terror attack in Paris. Many Muslims were either scared to leave their homes, or to wear the hijab, fearing attack.

Intimidation and abuse is a response fuelled by ignorance and intolerance, but we must not explain it away in such terms. While those who target the Muslim community should suffer heavy penalty, we must also step up efforts to educate those who are taking out their anger on people who only want to live in peace alongside the rest of society, until they realise that indiscriminate attacks on Muslims only deepens a sense of Western persecution among supporters of so-called Islmanic State, and increases the likelihood of further terror attacks.