Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, head of Britain’s largest “mainstream” Islamic advocacy group, said all the right things in his statement today: British Muslim leader in call to support the police.

And with only the teeniest little hint of a threat. His PR people must be working with him.

A BRITISH Muslim leader yesterday condemned the terror attacks and called on the faithful to provide “all necessary support” to prevent further outrages.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said it was the “Islamic duty” to do this.

He said: “It looks, sadly, as if the terror threat facing our country will be with us for some time to come.

“So let us be absolutely clear about this - that those who seek to deliberately kill or maim innocent people are the enemies of all of us.

“There is no cause whatsoever that could possibly justify such barbarity.

“Those who engage in such murderous actions and those that provide support for them are the enemies of all, Muslims and nonMuslims, and stand against our shared values in the UK.” He said his group would be convening a meeting of key imams and leading community activists in London on Saturday.

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago, Dr. Abdul Bari was singing a very different tune, inciting Muslim rage over Salman Rushdie: British Muslim Leaders Seething Over Rushdie.

“Many will interpret the knighthood as a final contemptuous parting gift from Tony Blair to the Muslim world,” said secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, Abdul Bari.

Bari said that the Indian-born author earned “notoriety among Muslims for the highly insulting and blasphemous manner in which he portrayed early Islamic figures much-loved and honoured by them.”

“The insensitive decision to grant Rushdie a knighthood can therefore only do harm to the image of our country in the eyes of hundreds of millions of Muslims across the world,” he warned.