How 7/7 bomb blasts replaced a generation of British Muslims

On 7 July 2005, 52 people were killed and hundreds of more injured in bomb blasts targeting London’s transport network during Rush hours. Terrorist attacks sent shockwaves worldwide – but especially in Leeds where three of the four suicide bages grew up.

Young activist Fahd Khan says, “It changed the conservative story of the fact that a terrorist looked like someone who was British-born, western clothes and was with a backpack.”

“When I came to know that they were from Leeds, it was just a huge shock.”

Mr. Khan is now volunteers at the Youth Center who visited some bombers in his teens.

On 7 July 2005, three tube trains and a bus were killed in quick succession, which Mi5 states that “was the first successful attack by the Islamist suicidal attackers in the UK”.

All four of suicidal attackers were under 30 years of age and three were the British-born sons of Beston and Pakistani parents of Halobek regions.

The community was shocked and the incidents forced terrorism at the forefront of the city’s Muslim community.

For Mr. Khan, now 38, this news changed the perceptions of people of young Muslim men.

He says, “This changed the story that looked like me – and there is a lot to deal with it.”

After the bomb blasts, Mr. Khan started working voluntarily at our center of Beaston.

30 -year -old Mohammad Sidik Khan asked to be a group leader, there was a young outreach activist, while the employees earlier confirmed that two other terrorists, 22 -year -old Shahzad Tanveer and 18 -year -old Hasib Hussain, also spent time at the center.

After the bombings, Mr. Khan’s goal was to attach the young people and help them find their voice.

“We were talking to the youth of very disadvantaged communities,” they explain.

“Often the first generation British-born people do not support their parents, they do not support a disconnect, language obstacles and these huge issues and are feeling targeted by the policies being created by the government at that time.

“Our aim was to bring these children from the periphery to the center.”

After 7/7, the government took several initiatives with the aim of preventing future attacks. It was set in 2006.

It is one of the four varieties of the government’s umbrella counter-conversion strategy competition and Designed to support people at risk of joining extremist groups And to complete terrorist activities.

Fundamental work is done in schools, trust organizations and jails.

However, the strategy of prevention has been criticized by some MPs, National Union of Teachers and British Muslim Council.

Some people argue that it is reverse and it can make Muslim students feel isolated and combine the common sense of mistrust in communities.

Yahya Burt, a researcher, academic and community advocate of British Muslim affairs, was one of the people consulted by the government in the early days of attacks.

“My hope was that we could make policies with real purchases from Muslim communities,” they say.

“But we never achieved that consensus.

“The Muslim community wanted a more rustic view where they testified with youth issues and obtained support for it … but the government wanted a combative approach to take on extremist elements.

He said: “It was not something that was equipped to do the Muslim community.”

Baronic Saeeda Warsi, who is also from a Pakistani Muslim family of West Yorkshire, was starting her political career at the time of bomb blasts.

In 2007, she became the first Muslim to serve as a minister in the Chhaya Cabinet.

But Ms. Warsi called the government’s anti -terrorism schemes “toxic”.

“It was an upstream policy made with Muslim communities, but it became a policy for Muslim communities,” she says.

“It was not about the fight of ideas – it became about policing communities.”

A home office spokesperson said: “Now we have one of the strongest terrorism-attentive structure in the world that does not target any one community and belongs to all types of terrorist ideology.”

He said that “frightening” 7/7 attacks had a permanent influence on the remaining people, loved ones and communities “.

When the attacks took place, Muhemin Hussain Mbe was just 11 years old.

The tragedy inspired him to join a peace walk organized by 7/7 survivor, Gill Hicks, which changed his life.

“A perception was made about British Muslims, and I was growing up in that era,” they say.

“I didn’t believe that these people represented my religion or identity – it wanted to move me and call it out.”

Now 31-year-old Mr. Hussain worked with the government on a counter-extremism efforts and when he accepts criticism, he also looks at the work.

“Yes, some initiatives were toxic, but we did positive work, there was deformity,” they say.

“We needed a strategy – because we had 7/7 and we had terrorism in this country.”

Back to Beston, Mr. Khan believes that Leeds have traveled a long way.

“You have more confidence and clear more confidence and clear more confidence and clear.

“Leeds are flexible – it does not sit under a shadow of 7/7.”