ISLAMIC Council of Jamaica (ICJ) President Mustafa Muhammed has described last week’s alleged plot to blow up a fuel line that feeds New York’s John F Kennedy International Airport as “the plan of criminals”, while urging Muslims worldwide to speak out publicly against acts of terrorism.

According to Muhammed, Muslims add “fuel to the fire’ with their silence.

“It (silence) gives the wrong impression that we agree [with terrorists].what we need is an international cry from Muslims – a conference, where we meet and pledge to do whatever it takes to ensure that if these people (terrorists) come where we are, they will get no peace,” Muhammed told the Sunday Observer last week.

He emphasised that nowhere in the Koran were Muslims instructed to inflict hostility on any other group of persons, adding that if this were a principle of the Koran, it would mean that Muslims with differing views would be hostile towards each other.

Tijani Musa, head of Islam education in Jamaica, agreed, noting that terrorists who claim to be doing the work of Allah were “enemies of Islam” who were “creating problems for real Muslims”.

Two Saturday’s ago, United States authorities announced that they had foiled a terrorist plot by four Caribbean Muslims to destroy JFK International Airport.

They named the men as Russell deFreitas, Guyanse-born American citizen and former cargo worker at JFK; Abdul Kadir, also of Guyana, a former parliamentarian of the main opposition People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR); Kareem Ibrahim, citizen of Trinidad and Tobago; and Abdel Nur, of Guyana.

“When I first heard it, I was very surprised,” Muhammed said late last week, adding that he had never considered the possibility of the Caribbean being linked to a terror plot.

He also said that he wondered whether the suspects had considered that many Muslims would have been killed along with other victims if these attacks had been successful, and he referred to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, in which he said hundreds of Muslims were killed.

Muhammed went on to issue a warning to local Muslims:

“If anyone is adamant about hostility and we cannot rid them of it, then we will have no choice but to get the law of the land involved.”

Meanwhile, he said Jamaicans, including members of the Muslim community, should be concerned about growing terror threats around the globe. In fact, he said members of the Muslim community were particularly concerned since they were being represented negatively.

“To say that people should not be concerned would be losing sight of reality,” Muhammed said.

Noting also that some persons were increasingly becoming Islamophobic, the (ICJ) President expressed the hope that these persons would use the track record of Jamaica’s Muslims as the yardstick to judge Muslims.

He cited the Bob Woolmer case as an example of this growing Islamophobia.

“I guarantee that if Bob Woolmer was the coach of any other team, they would not have said that he was murdered so quickly. Why this was said so quickly was because they (team members) were Muslims.”

Added Muhammed: “The ICJ has a good relationship with everyone in Jamaica, from the law to the public, and it is our intention to ensure that this good relationship is maintained.”