A local Muslim leader worries Muslims will be unfairly targeted by the new anti-terrorism law proposed Friday by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Though he supports the intent of the proposal, Aasim Rashid, director of religion at the BC Muslim Association, says the new law could put members of his community at risk of being unfairly profiled simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“We’ve heard from officers that they’re more concerned about behaviours, behaviour patterns and it’s based on that they will form a profile and that’s really nice to hear,” said Rashid. “However, it seems if you have a certain last name or a certain first name, you’re already being treated in a certain way by the system and that is a concern.”

The new laws will make it possible for officials to block a suspect's bank transactions and prevent someone from flying even when there's no immediate danger to the plane.

“We're in a world that's becoming increasingly unsafe,” said the Prime Minister in a speech Friday.

The bill allows police to remove online terrorist propaganda with a judge’s order and makes encouraging a terrorist attack a crime punishable by up to five years in prison—two measures lauded by Rashid.

“Jihadist terrorism is not a future possibility, but a present reality,” said Harper.

But the BC Muslim leader says the government should focus as much on prevention through education as it is on enforcement. He said laws alone don’t prevent extremist views.

“That is where radicalization needs to be stopped,” he said “The laws and certain measures are always necessary but what we’re dealing with is youth being exposed to messages and going through a kind of internal change.”

He is calling for a national education program to prevent violent extremism. His organization has asked the federal government for support, but so far it has received no response.

BC Civil Liberties Association Policy Director Michael Vonn is even more emphatic, saying the bill creates more problems than solutions.

“This is really a laundry list of the worst security notions that we are gathering globally,” she said. “We’re not having an appropriate discussion about any one of them. And they’re being crammed into an omnibus bill and the big worry is that we’re going to hurt Canadians in the name of ‘protecting them’.”

The new law replicates many measures seen in the U.S. since 9/11, including the no-fly list, which is notoriously difficult to be removed from once one appears on it.

Vonn said the provisions in the bill are based on the notion on that we have empirical evidence that such measures prevent terrorist attacks. That’s simply untrue, she said.

“This is the kind of thing that we say does not prevent the ‘lone wolf’ but prevents ordinary Canadians who should never be put on such lists from carrying out their lives and having effective redress,” she added.

With files from CTV’s Mi-Jung Lee