By Hadi Yahmid, IOL Correspondent
PARIS, August 14, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – The July 7 London attacks perpetrated by four British Muslims, including three of Pakistani origin, are having domino effects on the Pakistani minority in France, sparking an unprecedented Pakistanophobia.
"This close media and security scrutiny is really playing on the nerves of the Pakistanis in France ," Abdel Rahman Quraishi, the chairman of the Federation of Pakistani Organizations in France , told IslamOnline.net.
Minority leaders complain that since the terrorist bombings the French people have started looking down on Pakistanis, who expressed deep concern about stereotyping an entire race for the work of a handful.
"A right-wing newspaper, for instance, launched a ferocious campaign against Pakistanis in France and placed them in one basket, calling them a ‘cause for concern.’"
Quraishi, who is also the imam of the main Pakistani mosque in Saint Denis, northern Paris , said the federation is planning to take legal action against the newspaper.
"A delegation representing the Pakistani minority went to the British embassy in Paris immediately after the attacks and offered heartfelt condolences," he recalled.
Four young British Muslims attacked three London underground trains and a bus on July 7, killing 52 people.
Police have found that the bombers acted on their own and had no link to Al-Qaeda.
Under the Microscope
IOL’s correspondent says Pakistanis feel that their private lives are increasingly vulnerable.
Quraishi’s mosque has come to the fore since the attacks and its visitors feel that they are put under the microscope.
There are three Pakistani mosques in France concentrating in the capital Paris and its suburbs.
There are some 60,000 Pakistanis living in France, the third biggest Pakistani community abroad after Britain and the United States .
Authorities have so far deported a Pakistani for "illegal residency" and detained another at a Paris airport for "holding forged passports".
Many Pakistanis have cancelled traditional summer visits to their motherland in fear of being harassed at airport.
"It is really provocative to feel targeted, but we will take this into our strides," Mazar, a 43-year-old shopkeeper, told IOL.
"I’m sure that we are being discriminated against for no reason than being Muslims."
Shabnam Sohil, a French activist of Pakistani origin, said Pakistanis in France should refuse to be provoked and lead normal lives.
"We, as French citizens, shouldn’t forgo our rights and stand up firmly to any sort of discrimination or harassment," she told IOL.
Sohil, however, believes that the current mood is short-lived because the Pakistani minority has been credited as law-binding.
French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy told Le Parisian newspaper in July he was planning to put forward new anti-terror measures authorizing eavesdropping on phone calls and archiving them for one year.
He said that those coming into France from or leaving to Syria , Afghanistan and Pakistan would be placed under close scrutiny.