From last weekend’s Sunday Times:
When Lance Corporal Jabron Hashmi returned home a fully fledged soldier in 2004, he was proud, confident and keen to be seen in his combat uniform. Nothing could persuade him to change out of his camouflage gear as he met his best friend, Zulqar Waheed, and went to see a film in Birmingham. “It was right after his passing-out parade and he was wanting to show off his uniform,” said Mr Waheed, who had been close to the young soldier since he had arrived in the city at the age of 12. On their way home, they encountered abuse from a white man. “He shouted, ‘Hey, Paki, you shouldn’t be wearing that’. I thought, ‘Oh my God’, this guy is willing to give up his life for you, and that’s what he gets.” Last Saturday the soldier died in the Afghan badlands, across the border from his childhood home in Pakistan. The death of Lance Corporal Hashmi, one of 350 British Muslims in the Armed Forces, and the first to be killed in the current campaign against terrorism, highlights another face of British Islam. His relatives refuse to blame anyone for his death.
Read the story of this British hero here .
But read how one group reacted here.