Categorising communities by religion is dangerous and counterproductive

"The Conservative party has commissioned a report about national security. One of the findings is that the Government is wrong to communicate with people from ethnic minorities as though they were members of groups rather than individual citizens.
(Read related BBC Story here)

The NSS has been saying this for years. The Blair Government created these group categories – mostly based on religion – to define whole swathes of the population. But the huge numbers who didn’t want to define themselves in this way were left without a voice.

[...]

Maryam Namazie and her recently-launched group, The Ex-Muslim Council of Britain, has vividly illustrated that there is no way that the label “Muslim” can be accurately attached to everyone who has come from a Muslim cultural background."

National Secular Society, 27.07.2007

My plea to fellow Muslims: you must renounce terror

"When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.
By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology."

The Observer, July 1, 2007

7/7 bombs staged, say one in four Muslims

"A quarter of Britain's two million Muslims believe Government agents staged the July 7 suicide bombings, a new survey has found.

[...]

The poll, for Channel 4 News, discovered that conspiracy theories about July 7 are rife among Muslims - similar to those about the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
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It came on the day Tony Blair attended a conference on Islam and insisted Muslims "overwhelmingly" wanted to be "loyal citizens", despite the "disproportionate" public attention given to "small, groups" of radicals."

Daily Telegraph, 05/06/2007