One in six Londoners avoids Muslims

LONDON: One in six people in Britain's capital have admitted moving seats on public transport to avoid a passenger they think is Muslim, according to a survey published on Tuesday.

Some 35 percent of travellers in London said they had felt nervous or uncomfortable in the last year because someone of south Asian or north African appearance had got on their underground train or bus.

Of that number, nearly half said they had moved seats or sat down away from them, the survey, by pollsters YouGov for London's Evening Standard newspaper, suggested.

On July 7 last year, 56 people were killed when four Muslim suicide bombers -- three of them Britons of Pakistani origin -- detonated explosives on three underground trains and a double-decker bus.

An alleged plot to replicate the attacks was foiled two weeks later and since then there have been a number of high-profile counter-terrorism operations.

Last month more than two dozen people, most of them British Pakistanis, were arrested in connection with an alleged conspiracy to blow up US-bound passenger jets.

Soon after those arrests, which ushered in unprecedented security at airports, two Urdu-speaking Muslim students from Manchester, northwest England, were taken off a British charter jet after their fellow passengers voiced concerns.

There was also concern at an alleged proposal to introduce passenger profiling along racial and/or religious lines, which one senior Muslim police officer warned could create a new offence of "travelling while Asian".

The poll said just five percent of respondents backed special checks at airports on men who appear to be of "Asian or north African origin".

A further 45 percent said they backed random checks of all passengers, with special attention paid to men with Asian or north African features.

But 46 percent said nobody should be singled out because of their background or appearance.