London, March 2: It may be better to be beardless in Britain, judging by the warning issued to British Muslims by a minister in Tony Blair?s government responsible for terrorism and security.

The home office minister, Hazel Blears, almost certainly did not want to give offence to the 1.5 million strong Muslim community in Britain but her comments have outraged some of its leaders. Blears said UK Muslims should accept that people of Islamic appearance are more likely to be stopped and searched by police. She seemed to acknowledge that innocent Muslims would be targeted because of the search for Islamic extremists.

If what is saying has any relevance, it seems Britain is confronting a ?Chinese puzzle?. Not all Muslims are terrorists ? far from it ? but all Islamic terrorists by definition claim to belong to the Islamic faith. And it is the case that some younger Muslim men, probably as a way of asserting their identity, are today less inhibited about growing beards.

This has had unexpected consequences. A distinguished British Asian theatre director, Jatinder Varma, who arrived many years ago in Britain from Kenya, and who said he was very much Hindu and Punjabi, disclosed some people had abused him by calling him ?bin Laden?. In earlier years, the common insult had been ?Paki?. Varma still keeps his beard, now flecked with grey.

Blears has caused the storm this week by telling MPs on the home select committee: ?The threat is most likely to come from those people associated with an extreme form of Islam, or who are falsely hiding behind Islam.?

She added: :It means that some of our counter-terrorism powers will be disproportionately experienced by the Muslim community. If a threat is from a particular place then our action is going to be targeted at that area.?

In future, it would also be more difficult for imams to come to Britain from Pakistan, for example. On ministers of religions, such as imams, Blears said faith groups would be asked what other qualifications and skills, such as civic knowledge and ability to engage the community, should be demanded. Last year, ministers introduced a requirement that ministers should speak English to a certain level.

There was an angry response to her comments from Muslim leaders. One on an Islamic human rights commission, Massoud Shadjareh, accused Blears of ?playing an Islamophobia card? in the run-up to a general election.

?She is demonising and alienating our community,? he said. ?It is a legitimisation for a backlash and for racists to have an onslaught on our community. This sort of comment is just music to the ears of racists.?

Statistics showed that of the 17 people found guilty of terrorist acts in the UK since the September 11 attacks, only four of the 12 whose ethnic backgrounds were known were Muslim, he added. However, figures published last week showed that people from ethnic minorities were increasingly likely to be targeted by police stop and search tactics.

Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, suggested Blears was ?scaremongering? to help get controversial anti-terror laws allowing ?control orders? on terror suspects on to the statue books.

He said: ?Her comments are thoroughly unhelpful at a time when British Muslims are undeniably facing a growing climate of Islamophobia.?

Earlier this week, a British born Muslim, Saajid Badat, 25, who had grown up in Gloucester, confessed he had gone to Pakistan and picked up kit to be a shoe bomber with the intention of blowing up an American aircraft over the Atlantic. He had been an associate of Richard Reid, the notorious ?shoe bomber? from Britain who is now serving a life sentence. Badat later changed his mind.

Early pictures of Badat show him as a football loving Grammar School boy in Gloucester but recent photographs reveal a full Islamic beard. His family came to Britain from Malawi.