WTC: Special

Out from devastation: the rubble, the burning buildings, the broken bodies. Out from America's anger... Britons ask What next?

The Voice, Black British newspaper
Let's not shed more innocent blood

"It [America] must understand that it can no longer use the full force of its military might against even tiny nations like Grenada in 1983.

"If terror on the scale seen in New York and Washington is ever to be eradicated then the powerless must be listened to."

Rabbi Tony Bayfield, head, Reform Movement in Judaism in Britain
My fragile hope

"In some sense, the crusades have never quite ended. This week's terrorism, rightly condemned by almost all Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders, nevertheless points to a current struggle that is forcing itself on our consciousness...[it is] a clash of power and perceptions.

"In condemning the wicked aberration of terrorism we should not be blind to a profound historical, economic, cultural and religious encounter between the post-Christian, affluent, democratic west and the millions in the world outside it."

The Muslim News Online
War on terrorism or Muslims

"September 11, will doubtlessly go down in history as the day that shook the world. Many politicians and commentators say it could be a defining moment. From the beginning, US President George W Bush, followed by Blair, started to talk in the emotive terms of ‘war’, that it was the ‘civilised’ world against the ‘uncivilised’ world and that it was a ‘crusade’. Was it just plain recklessness to describe the operation as ‘Infinite Justice’ or could it have been a deliberate provocation with a hidden agenda, as conspiracy theorists would suggest?"

Natasha Walters, columnist The Independent
All these tears make me uneasy

"Where have our three-minute silences been for the dead of Rwanda, Srebrenica or Sierra Leone?"

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, columnist and writer
We share your grief. You must share our concerns

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

"More questions need to be asked about why this country, the United States of America, has supported so many bloody tyrants in recent history and to remember that others too suffer from terrorism..."

Clare Short, Member of Parliament and the Cabinet of the Labour Government
Cabinet unity broken by Short

" I think we all understand that America feels so angry that they want to get somebody, but you can't have lots of planes and guns and ships and make everybody do their bidding.

"The whole thing is awful, it's getting worse and worse and creating more bitterness...[and] all this suffering on Muslim and Arab people."

Tariq Ali, writer and 1968 student activist
Getting used to the idea of double-standards

Tariq Ali

"Osama bin Laden will be sacrificed in the interests of the greater cause and handed over dead or alive to Washington. But will that be enough? The only solution is political. It requires removing the causes that create the discontent. It is despair that feeds fanaticism and it is a result of Washington's policies in the Middle East and elsewhere."

Khalid Mahmood, Labour Party Member of Parliament for Birmingham and Perry Barr

Khalid Mahmood

"It would be quite wrong for the British Muslims to be tarred with the same brush [as those responsible] following this terrible act of terrorism."

Harold Pinter, playwright, and a group of actors and poets
Artists appeal for campaign against war, not Afghans

Harold Pinter

"A new crusade against Afghanistan, Iraq and other counties which are said to harbour terrorists will not rescue any of the victims of 11 September or make the cities of America and Europe any safer. It will only create thousands more victims."

Akbar Ahmed, former High Commissioner of Pakistan in the UK and chair of Ibn Khaldun Islamic Studies, American University, Washington, D.C.

"The actions of the hijackers may have had nothing to do with Islam, but the consequences and causes of their actions has everything to do with how and where Islam will be going in the 21st century."

Prof. Anoush Ehteshami, director, Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Durham

We need more expertise on Afghanistan. The atrocity in New York should be a wake up call to British Universities.

For all the talk of our special relationship with the United States, Britain also has a special relationship with the Muslim world. It has either created many of its modern states, ruled over large parts of them, or developed close trade relationships with its key countries.

"Yet there has been a real withering away of the well-grounded expertise in the key areas and countries of the Muslim world that had existed in Britain.

John Pilger, writer and columnist

"For the prime minister to behave responsibly, he would have to speak out with a very different voice. He could say: "Our response must not be to sink to the level of this criminal outrage and kill for the sake of killing."

"He could seize this extraordinary historic moment and call for the redirection of western politics away from war and towards peace - specifically peace in those regions of the world where one type of terrorism is the product largely of imperialism, old and new. Britain is deeply implicated.

"The start of peace would be the establishment of a Palestinian homeland, as laid down in international law by a 34-year-old UN resolution; the lifting of the horrific embargo on the civilian population of Iraq; and the careful, negotiated ending of Afghanistan's isolation.

"A tall order, yes. But these are the root causes of a grievance and rage we can barely imagine, and there is no other enduring solution than peace with justice."

Amyn B Sajoo, a human rights and Muslim affairs scholar based in London

"Within hours of the events in New York and Washington, reports were rife of mosques in Seattle and Montreal being defiled, of anti-Muslim marches in Chicago, of veiled women and dark-skinned men being assaulted in various American cities.

" Meanwhile in Britain, no further encouragement is needed to see the world inside and outside in such terms. The alarmist reporting that cast asylum seekers as an invading army stampeding through France to overrun our shores has already fed the agendas not only of far right groups but even mainstream parties.

" In this climate, British Muslim insistence that acts of political violence are an affront to Islamic humanism no less than to "western" values could well fall on deaf ears."

Caryl Phillips, Black British writer
Ground zero. Life in the exclusion zone

Caryl Phillips

"As dawn broke on Wednesday, I knew that the world of New York City had changed, possibly forever. Out of my window I could see the National Guard patrolling. My area, lower Manhattan between 14th Street and Canal, was now sealed off.

"[Thursday morning] The traffic continues to move south and north, sending in the equipment and personnel, bringing out rubble and the dead. It is another beautiful day in Manhattan. Clear blue skies to the north, to the east, to the west. I am learning not to look south any more.

Syed Ali, of Balham, south London
British Muslim who lost daughter in New York attacks racists

"I have received a bad reaction in the street - gnashes of teeth, bad looks. But they don't know I lost a daughter in the bombing - they just see an Asian or an Arab."

Open Letter To Prime Minister Tony Blair from the Muslim Council of Britain, London Islamic Cultural Centre, Imams and Mosques Council, Al-Khoei Foundation, Muslim Aid, Palestinian Community Assn in the UK, UK Islamic Mission, Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism.

Military action against Afghanistan could be misconstrued as a war between Islam and the West

Muslim Council of Britain

Responding to horrific killings of innocent people with further indiscriminate violence where ordinary people are victims, not to mention untold environmental damage, is neither civilised, nor the long-term answer to the problem of international terrorism.”

“Terrorism is a problem throughout the world, affecting those of all faiths and nations... “It is clear that it cannot be solved by military means and the singling out a few Muslim countries to pay the price for specific incidents of global terrorism threatens to provoke further attacks and lead to further atrocities.