Muslim groups in Britain reacted with scepticism after British police hinted that Islamists were behind an alleged major terrorist plot to blow up US-bound flights.
Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson, from London's Metropolitan Police, stressed that the plot concerned "people who might masquerade within a community behind certain faiths".
The term "community" is often used in Britain to refer to people from the country's minority faiths and ethnic groups, particularly the 1.65 million Muslims who account for 2.8 percent of Britain's 60 million-strong population.
The majority of the 24 people arrested over the airplane plot were understood to be of Pakistani origin, Britain's domestic Press Association news agency said, citing unnamed senior police sources.
The Muslim Council of Britain, the main umbrella group, told AFP that some Muslims would be fearful of a potential backlash against the community.
"All right-thinking people must support the police in the intelligence-led actions they take to foil plots," said MCB spokesman Inayat Bunglawala.
"However, there will also be a sense of unease about how the arrests may be used by some far-right groups and others to portray once again British Muslims as a community as a huge reservoir of potential terrorists.
"There's a weariness about what will follow."
Urging caution, he added: "We have seen similar high-profile raids in the past where people have been arrested only to be released without charge."
The huge June 2 police raid on a house in east London, suspected to have been a chemical weapons factory, failed to produce any evidence of terrorist activity, prompting anger from some Muslims in Britain.
Khurshid Ahmed, a member of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) in Birmingham -- Britain's second city where some of the arrests took place -- said he was relieved that the attack had been foiled.
"The response here is one of shock that we still find young people actively involved in activities which we would condemn as a society and also a sense of relief that a possible attack has been thwarted," he told BBC radio.
Fahad Ansari, of the less moderate Islamic Human Rights Commission, said there would be "cynicism" from many Muslims about the police's anti-terror operation.
"Over the last few years we have seen many high profile raids like this plastered over the press to terrify the public.
"It has been hit and miss on too many occasions. It is causing a lot of mass hysteria."
He suggested the raids could have been timed to take the heat off Prime Minister Tony Blair's government over its stance on the war between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
Blair is in "denial" and "has to realise that there was a relationship" between British foreign policy -- from Iraq to Afganistan and the Middle East -- and the July 2005 London bombings, Ansari said.
London Mayor Ken Livingstone warned against blaming Britain's Muslim community as a whole for the alleged terror plot.
"Only a united London can help defeat terrorism, which means that all London's communities have their part to play," he said.
In the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil, four British Islamist suicide bombers killed themselves and 52 others on London's transport network on July 7, 2005.
The Met Police's Stephenson had stressed that the police operation was "not about communities: this is about criminals".
Some Muslim groups have complained that members of the faith have been unfairly targeted in the years since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
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