BRITAIN:Conservative leader David Cameron has sharply rebuked a Birmingham Muslim leader who has compared anti-terror arrests in the city to the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany.
Mohammed Naseem, chairman of the Birmingham Central Mosque, made his explosive comments following last week's arrests of nine men in connection with an alleged terrorist plot to target a member of the British armed forces for an Iraqi-style kidnapping and execution.
Dr Naseem, described by the BBC as "one of the elder statesmen of Islam in Britain" - who also questioned whether Muslims were behind the London bombings and whether al-Qaeda actually exists - said he saw "similarities" between Tony Blair's approach to Britain's Muslim community and Adolf Hitler's demonisation of the Jews.
Emerging from almost two hours of talks at the mosque yesterday, Mr Cameron said Dr Naseem was "completely and utterly wrong" in this, as in his suggestion that Britain was becoming a police state.
"He's completely and utterly wrong and I think that's not responsible at all," he said. "It's quite clear from the events of 7/7 and other events that Britain does face a terrorist threat and we need to confront and defeat it."
That charge that Britain was in danger of "coming close to a police state" was renewed yesterday - this time by the Archbishop of York, who criticised home secretary John Reid's proposal for 90-day detention of terror suspects. John Sentamu, who fled Uganda in the 1970s, claimed Dr Reid had not made the case for 90-day detention without charge, and likened it to the tyrannical rule in his home country of Idi Amin. "Why does he want these days, so the police do what - gather more evidence? To me that becomes, if you're not careful, very close to a police state in which they pick you up and then say later on we'll find the evidence against you. That's what happened in Uganda with Idi Amin."
At the same time Dr Sentamu urged people living in the UK to adopt and "cherish" British values. The archbishop, who is the first member of an ethnic minority to serve in that office in the Church of England, said: "In a [ democratic] country like this to then say 'I am going to kidnap somebody, I'm going to kill somebody, I will blow people up' - for whatever ideology that is about, it isn't good citizenship. If you do not actually subscribe to the things that make Britain, you are going to be in trouble."
He warned that even talking about "radicalised young Muslims" suggested a "glamour", adding: "For me they are evil people with evil intentions, breaking the law."