London, England - News of a thwarted plot to down trans-Atlantic airliners sent a shiver of anxiety through Britain's Muslim community Thursday.
Muslim men accustomed to nervous looks from passers-by after last year's transit bombings noticed they were attracting them again. Some said they worried about a spike in hate crimes and job discrimination.
The suspects were believed to be mainly British Muslims, at least some of Pakistani ancestry. Three of the four suicide bombers who struck London's transit system were Britons of Pakistani origin, and many Muslims feared their community would be held responsible this time.
After an evening meeting of community leaders in east London, a spokesman for the Waltham Forest Islamic Association said one of those arrested was a woman in her 20s, who has a 6-month-old baby. Imtiaz Qadir said he knew other people who had been taken into custody in the raids.
"I know five of the men very well and they are really respectable young Muslim men," Qadir added. "I am totally shocked. I don't believe they've done anything to warrant this."
Monirul Sardar, 33, a Briton of Bangladeshi origin who runs an east London travel agency, said he'd noticed his bushy beard drawing stares after every major terror attack in recent years.
"It's started up again," he said. "People are afraid of me, mostly. ... If it's an old man, a lady in a hijab (head covering), they'll pick on them."
Harris Bokhari, a spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, said the group was asking mosques to urge worshippers to report any racial attacks.
But he said Muslims had demonstrated after the Sept. 11 attacks and the London bombings that they would not let such trouble stop them from participating in British life.
The Muslim community's relationship with police has been fraught in recent months, and some said they were waiting to see what evidence police would produce of the alleged bomb plot.
"They've arrested people, but let's see what they find from them," said Maj Ali, 27, who works at a northeast London restaurant near a home police were searching as part of their terror investigation.
"They didn't find nothing," he recalled of a June raid in which officers shot a man in the shoulder in his east London home during a search for the makings of a chemical bomb.
The man and his brother were arrested but later freed without charge. That raid and the fatal subway shooting last year of an innocent Brazilian man mistaken for a terrorist infuriated many Muslims.
"Was this (airline bomb plot) information really accurate or not from the police in terms of its intelligence?" Bokhari asked. "We need to be aware how these people were arrested."
When one home was raided Wednesday night, neighbors said unmarked police cars lined the busy street in Walthamstowe, east London. About 20 officers broke down the door of a three-story yellow and white building and searched its first-floor apartment with flashlights.
Neighbor Wendy Phillips, 31, said the men who lived in the home had paid for it in cash - unusual in expensive London - and just moved in last month. A white and red "SOLD" sign still stood in front.
"It's scary when it's on your doorstep," Phillips said. "You start wondering who you're living next door to."
Amar Singh, 17, stood on the corner across the street from the house talking animatedly with friends about the alleged plot.
"I'm shocked," Singh said. "This is usually a quiet area."