Muslim Community Leaders

This business of the foiled plot to blow up airliners:

Muslim community leaders were contacted by the police and Government officials early this morning as the first statements were released to the press.

Khurshid Ahmed, leader of the British Muslim Forum was rung by a chief superintendent from the Metropolitan Police and a senior official from the Department for Communities and Local Government just before 7am to be told the arrests had taken place.

The police also contacted Dr Muhammed Abdul Bari, General Secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, at 6.54am. He was told that a number of arrests had taken place “for the public’s safety” but given few details.

Mr Ahmed said that he felt the operation had been handled well but he warned that if the police failed to find any evidence to incriminate the people concerned then relations between the government and the Muslim community would deteriorate further.

Is it normal police practice to inform religious leaders when members of their flock are arrested? Do they ring the Archbishop of Canterbury every time a Christian’s collared?

And who gave Khurshid Ahmed the moral authority to lecture police on how to deal with terrorist threats, given that his fellow British Muslims have engaged in terrorist acts in the past – in the name of their religion – and have been applauded for it by a not insignificant proportion of their peers.