February 02, 2007	Friday	Muharram 13, 1428

LONDON: An alleged plot to kidnap and behead a Muslim soldier will undercut the British military’s efforts to recruit Muslims, accused by Islamists of betraying their faith, experts said on Thursday.

“The intention is to deter Muslims from joining the British army,” British defence analyst Peter Neumann told AFP.

“That certainly they would have achieved. Even now they are probably achieving that without the (alleged) plot even being carried out,” said Neumann, head of the Centre for Defence Studies at King’s College in London.

British police were today quizzing nine suspects over an alleged “Iraq-style” plot they foiled the day before in Birmingham to kidnap and behead a Muslim soldier, posting the filmed execution on the Internet.

The identity of the targetted soldier has not been revealed, but security sources say he was taken into police protection recently when police received indications that the alleged kidnapping was only days away.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) says there are 330 Muslims serving in Britain’s armed forces, 250 of them in the army, but it was cautious about answering questions about recruitment.

“It’s too early to establish what the short, the medium and long-term effects (on recruitment) will be, if any,” an MoD spokesman said.

Daoud Abdullah of the Muslim Council of Britain pointed out that the British army and the police have long struggled to enlist Muslims.

Muslims worry about being subject to racism or discrimination in such institutions, but they have had even greater reservations about joining the armed forces since the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, he said.

These wars are perceived as wars of aggression and unjust wars, he said.

“It doesn’t have to be a Muslim country.” Neumann added that other possible motives behind the alleged plot could be visceral hatred against a Muslim serving in the army as well as the low-tech ease at which it could be carried out.

The people such extremists hate most are “not normally their typical enemies but the traitors in their own ranks,” he said.

“I’m quite sure that a Muslim who joins the British army and fights in Iraq is detested by those people, even more so than normal English people who join the British army and fight in Iraq,” Neumann said

Neumann said the British army and police needed to recruit Muslims not just to show an “impartial” image but to help them carry out difficult security tasks within Muslim communities at home and abroad.

During raids to arrest suspected extremists in mosques in Britain, he noted, Muslim officers have been used because they cause less offence.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, Muslims soldiers are sometimes better able than their Christian counterparts to work with Muslims in those countries, he added.

Pakistan-born Lance Corporal Jabron Hashmi, who lived in Birmingham, became the first British Muslim soldier to die in Afghanistan on July 1 last year.—AFP