Muslims' deaths in UK riots widen ethnic rifts

Tariq Jahan, father of one of the men killed by a vehicle in the Dudley Road neighborhood of Birmingham, England, talks with reporters outside his home Aug. 11, 2011. / Getty Images

BIRMINGHAM, England - With police nowhere to be seen, the Muslims of Dudley Road armed themselves with bricks and stones, clubs and cricket bats to fend off carloads of marauding gangs.

Their vigilante stand in Birmingham's west end saved a humble row of family-run shops and a red-brick mosque from the looters' grasp — but at a terrible cost.

A carload of rioters sped into a fleeing crowd of shop defenders, witnesses said, hurling three young men into the air and killing amateur boxer Haroon Jahan, 21, and brothers Shazzad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31.

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"We all had stones in our hands. But we had no defense to stop a car. They revved their engines and drove right at us as fast as they could," Mohammed Ibrahim, 23, told The Associated Press. "These black men deliberately tried to kill us all."

Wednesday's 1 a.m. slaughter has laid bare racial tensions underlying this week's riots in Birmingham, Britain's second-largest city and its most ethnically diverse. A fifth of the city's 1 million "Brummies" are Muslims, most commonly of Pakistani origin. About 7 percent are black, mostly Caribbean, in background.

Tariq Jahan, Haroon Jahan's father, told reporters Wednesday after his son's death that the rioting has gone too far.

"Why are we doing this?" asked Jahan. "I lost my son. Step forward if you want to lose your sons. Otherwise, calm down and go home."

CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reports that some looters converged on the riots for just one reason.

(At left, watch Phillips' report where some looters appear on camera)

"Anger because the police nick you for stupid things," one looter, who spoke through a T-shirt pulled up to cover his face, told CBS News. "Now this is our payback because they can't do nothing to us today. The police can't do nothing."

While the riots that have swept England this week have involved looters of every creed and hue, the street anarchy also sometimes has exposed the racial fault lines that run beneath the poorest urban quarters.

Resident after resident of Dudley Road and its surrounding Winson Green district commented pointedly to The AP that the attackers were black and accused them of targeting Muslim shops.

The passions echo streetfights from previous years, such as in 2005, when a neighboring Birmingham district suffered two nights of violence between Caribbean and Asian gangs over unsubstantiated rumors that a gang of Pakistani men had raped a 14-year-old Jamaican girl. Two men were stabbed to death, firefighters faced machete-wielding mobs, and Muslim graves were desecrated during those clashes. The west side also suffered riots in 1981, 1985 and 1991 fueled by minority hatred of white police and black resentment of the Asians' dominant position as shopkeepers.

"We'll hunt down these black men, cut off their heads and feed them to our dogs," said Amir Hawid, 20, who lives just a hundred yards from the killing scene and heard the screams of the crowd at the moment of impact.

As forensics specialists combed the bloodied, rock-strewn pavement for clues, hundreds of local Muslims and Sikhs — some wearing ceremonial daggers at their waists — packed into a community hall Wednesday to confront three white police commanders who had come seeking to calm tensions. Twice as many Muslims, many in robes and kufi caps, stood outside.

Speaker after speaker complained that they had pleaded by phone for police protection the previous night, when black gangs raided local markets and chased bar staff onto the roof of one pub, yet police failed to respond. Some argued that the police had warned them not to attempt to defend their own streets, yet had offered no alternative.

The three dead men "did nothing wrong! They died because they were doing the job of protecting our community. The job that you lot should have been doing!" one speaker shouted, jabbing an accusatory finger at the police panel.

Detective Superintendent Richard Baker, commander of the 60-strong police team hunting the killers, said they already had arrested the suspected driver and 11 others potentially linked to the shop attacks on Dudley Road. He pleaded for locals to overcome their antipathy to the police, give eyewitness statements and hand over amateur camera footage.

"I will deploy whatever it takes to get justice for this community," Baker said above a din of muttered heckles and shouted accusations, dozens of men trying to speak at once.

Baker and the local commander, Superintendent Sean Russell, defended their force's response to the killings — which Russell admitted he could see from the police control center on a closed-circuit surveillance camera — because gangs were attacking shops in the city center. That triggered angry cries that police cared more for protecting downtown shopping centers than Muslim communities.

Russell said it took officers 10 minutes to arrive; locals insisted it was a half-hour and the officers arrived in riot gear thinking the Muslim crowd might pose a threat. The officers said they had to be cautious.

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Riots in the U.K.

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[finkfurst4]

EmpireGeorge says - "I don't know what would be better evidence than a government recommendation..."

I say - HA HA HA HA HA HA HA !!!!!!

[Zann-Zel]

You can laugh about your government, you haven't lived under ours.

[Danize]

Zan zero and empire bore: time to polish off your keggers and pass out.

[Zann-Zel]

I might drink two sips of an ice cold beer on a 105 degree day, and that's about it. Believing in the right to defend yourself does not require a person to be a beer drinker.

[Zann-Zel]

by finkfurst4 August 12, 2011 4:50 AM EDT
Zann-Zel August 11, 2011 3:49 PM EDT
Well I suppose we could just LEAVE America and we'll ALL come back to England, so we can leave them all in a natural state!
--------------------------
Noooooooooooo! PLEASE don't! I promise to tell you anything you want to hear as long as you don't.
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LOL! Thought you might see things my way! ; )

[Zann-Zel]

.....it's the years, living in a disarmed, government controlled European Socialist nation, that makes someone like that.....that's not being partisan either, just reality.
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Or maybe its just that England was settled long, long, before America was even discovered. Maybe there are no wild animals left in England? Maybe the only dangerous thing left is Humans. But there are still wild animals are in Texas!

[Omar4UK]

There is no Ethnic rift because of this incident.
Once again your great media company CBS News has twisted the facts...

[sasboy-2009]

I am extremely saddened by this senseless killing and rioting. But was it not the duty of the British police to be protecting the public ? The way I understand the gist of the above article, the local Muslim community organized themselves into vigilantee groups AFTER their properties were vandalized by the rioters. They would never have had to do that if the police were doing their jobs.

[finkfurst4]

The London police were slow and ineffective in the first day or two, and they made a complete **** up of the initial incident which triggered the riot. They got their act together later and did quite a good job (and without using excessive force), but they were far too slow in mobilising sufficient numbers of police.

[Zann-Zel]

Would this help you finkfurst?

"In one instance, a boar attacked a woman on a Fort Worth jogging trail. Two years ago, a Cherokee County deer hunter died from a feral hog attack."
Their razor sharp tusks combined with their lightning speed can cause serious injury," Taylor said.
There are numerous accounts of hunters (usually hunting hogs with dogs) getting hooked by a boar. While bowhunting for hogs on the 4X Ranch south of San Antonio I met a man that had 83 stitches on his left leg after a hog got hold of him in a cactus thicket while running it with dogs a few years previous. I have since lost track of the man, but I will never forget seeing his scars.


http://panews.com/outdoors/x681446177/Wild-hog-attacks-rare-but-scary

[finkfurst4]

Last word, from the article you just found......
"In a natural state, feral hogs will prefer to run and escape danger, and are not considered dangerous."

You only need a gun to shoot them if you've already tried to shoot them!!!!!

[Zann-Zel]

Well I suppose we could just LEAVE America and we'll ALL come back to England, so we can leave them all in a natural state!

[finkfurst4]

EmpireGeorge, Zann-Zel - It's been very illuminating and amusing hearing your bizarre arguments. It has reinforced my perception that Americans are astonishingly stupid and have only a tenuous grasp on reality. To put is simply - YOU ARE A JOKE.

As you couldn't find any links about the beasts which you need all these guns to defend yourselves against, here's one for you - www.electricscotland.com/haggis/haggis1.html..... but I swear the one I saw was half the width of a road and is known to be a maneater.

Bye for now............

[Zann-Zel]

finkfurst - since you'll never learn a thing, You'd do better to stay in familiar territory. Don't ever travel, because it will blow your mind when you find out the entire world is not like your little neighborhood.

[Zann-Zel]

This thing doesn't seem to be loading my replies. But hey finkfurst - you're welcome to come to Texas and meet all the friendly animals, anytime!

THe other day you said we could learn something from each other. But that isn't possible if you assume everything the other person says is not true. Also not possible if you assume that everything in another country is exactly the same as it is in your country.

[baileyccc]

I am so glad Amy Winehouse did not live to this happen in London. It would have depressed her over the edge.

[agnesdeo]

We are being programmed to call it "diversity".
We should honor, respect and welcome their foreign cultural practices instead of attempting to have them assimilate to our own culture/traditions/language, etc.