Category Archives: Scotland

Police and media accused of double standards over anti-Muslim violence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Scottish man who describes himself as a “proud racist” has admitted threatening to bomb Glasgow Central Mosque and engage in targeted killings of Muslims. Neil MacGregor has been convicted of a breach of the peace but there has been surprise in some quarters that he was not charged with terrorist offences. Critics have also said that the case would have attracted considerably more media interest if the man’s motivation had been Islamic rather than anti-Islamic.

In an email to Strathclyde police, MacGregor demanded the closure of all mosques in Scotland, threatening to kidnap and behead one Muslim each week if this demand were not met. He later called police to say that he had planted a nail bomb in Glasgow Central Mosque but police found nothing suspicious after evacuating 100 worshippers. MacGregor pleaded guilty and has been remanded in custody but sentencing was deferred yesterday by Glasgow Sherriff Court.

Comparisons have been made with the case of the Islamic militant Mohammed Atif Siddique, who was sentenced to eight years imprisonment in 2007 for collecting and circulating terrorist material. Siddique’s lawyer Aamer Anwar, suggested this week that the authorities would bring terrorism charges against Muslims but not against white racists.

However, a spokesperson for the Crown Office insisted that “The facts of the case made it clear that this was a hoax bomb threat which was racially aggravated. There was no evidence of terrorist motivation or intention.”

Osama Saeed of the Scottish Islamic Foundation responded by saying “It’s all too easy to dismiss MacGregor as a fantasist and lunatic – many of the Muslims convicted of terror offences could be similarly described.”

Saeed, who is also the Scottish National Party’s prospective Parliamentary candidate for Glasgow Central, criticised the lack of media coverage. “Imagine if a Scottish Muslim pleaded guilty to threatening to blow up Glasgow Cathedral and behead one Christian a week until all British troops were pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said. “It would be splashed over every newspaper in the land.”

But the story has spread quickly in online discussions, not only amongst Muslims. “I just feel angry that a chance to convince the Muslim community that there is no bias against them has fallen flat on its face” wrote the Christian blogger Graham Martin yesterday. “This whole situation might actually be used to justify further violence.”

Ekklesia, 20 June 2009

Thug demands ‘what’s your religion’ before launching racist attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A man has told of a “horrifying” attack during which a group of friends were racially abused by a gang wielding baseball bats and golf clubs. One man was physically attacked by the group, leaving him with back injuries.

One of his friends told BBC Scotland that they had been approached by a man while they were in an Edinburgh garden. The man made racially abusive comments towards the four men, who were of Asian origin, before returning with a group of friends to carry out the attack.

The 21-year-old man who was injured in the attack Monday night was taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary for treatment and released the following day.

One of the Asian men, who wants to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, told BBC Scotland about the incident. He said the group of friends had been in the garden in East Pilton Farm Avenue when a man passed and asked them their religion.

“One of my friends said we were Pakistanis and he suddenly started being abusive about Pakistanis and Asians,” he said. “My friend said: ‘Please leave this place, we are having a good time, I want you to have a good time, take care of yourself’, but he couldn’t stop. He went away for about 15 minutes and came back with four of his friends and they were shouting leave our country, which is quite horrifying.”

He said the men then started hitting his friend with a golf club and baseball bats. The man said he was able to pull his friend into his flat. The gang smashed a glass door, but fled when police were called. The man said his 21-year-old friend was still in “a lot of pain”.

BBC News, 3 June 2009

Turkey urges police action on BNP flyers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Turkish government has demanded the withdrawal of election leaflets distributed in Scotland by the British National party, claiming they are intended to incite racial and religious hatred. Flyers promoting the BNP’s European election campaign suggest that millions of Turkish Muslims would flood into Britain if the country were to be granted full EU membership.

One BNP leaflet being handed out on the streets of Glasgow said taxpayers’ money “shouldn’t be wasted on expanding Europe so that millions of Muslims in Turkey can join the invasion of foreign job snatchers”. Another urges voters to “oppose the dangerous drive backed by the other main parties to give 80m low-wage Muslim Turks the right to swamp Britain”.

Officials at the Turkish embassy in London have complained to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and have suggested the matter be referred to the police because the leaflets potentially breach race relations legislation.

“It is obvious that these are racist and highly inflammatory statements which insult both Turkey and the Turkish nation as a whole and put hundreds of thousands of Turks and Turkish Cypriots who live and have been born in Britain at risk of racist abuse and attacks,” said Orhan Tung, a spokesman for the embassy.

“I think the leaflets are a clear breach of both the Race Relations Act and the Racial and Religious [Hatred] Act, which makes it an offence to distribute written material with the intent to stir up religious or racial hatred. We believe that the relevant British authorities such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission should consider taking legal action against the party in question.”

Continue reading →

Scottish government to combat Islamophobia in schools

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamophobia FilmNo young person in Scotland should be disadvantaged or bullied on the grounds of their faith or race, said Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop as proposals for Islamophobia school workshops are announced.

The Scottish Government is providing £81,700 for the delivery of 152 Islamophobia workshops in secondary schools across Scotland over the next two years.

The workshops will be delivered by Show Racism the Red Card, a charity with a proven track record of working in schools by using football as a starting point to promote racial and religious equality messages.

The programme will look at the causes and consequences of Islamophobia; encourage young people to develop good relationships with people from different backgrounds and cultures to their own; prepare pupils for life in a multifaith, multicultural world; and provide teachers with a valuable teaching resource for ongoing use in the classroom.

Scottish government news release, 1 May 2009

Quilliam, New Labour and the witch-hunt of Osama Saeed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Osama and AlexCraig Murray responds to the disgraceful attempt by Ed Husain and his mates to smear Osama Saeed:

“The party political nature of the Quilliam Foundation is shown in their astonishing and completely unbalanced attack on Osama Saeed, a prominent SNP candidate and a friend of mine. They try to portray him as an Islamic extremist. If Osama is an Islamic extremist, then I am a Blairite.

“For New Labour to have even the faintest hope of a respectable performance at the general election, they must protect their Scottish base against the SNP. This pathetic attempt to smear the SNP as connected to Islamic extremism is a blatant abuse of taxpayers’ money….

“The real scandal here is not Osama Saeed, who is a good man dedicated to freedom and to bringing Scotland’s Muslim community into its mainstream politics. The real story is the blatant misuse of taxpayer funds by New Labour.”

Continue reading →

SNP urged to drop ‘sectarian and divisive’ Muslim candidate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Times takes up the witch-hunt against Osama Saeed initiated by the Quilliam Foundation.

An SNP spokesman is quoted as saying: “This disgraceful attack is untrue from start to finish, and shows that the politics of smear is not confined to websites. The Quilliam Foundation has zero credibility … this smear must be seen for what it is. We have strong community relations in Scotland, and when we are all working to build unity, the very last thing we need is people with no knowledge of Scotland spreading nastiness and smears.”

I’m going to quit Scotland because people have been nasty to me, says bomb-threat racist facing jail term

Posted on by Bob Pitt

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAA racist who threatened to bomb Scotland’s biggest mosque last night whined he would quit the country – because people had been “nasty” to him.

Neil MacGregor had also threatened to behead one Muslim a week until every mosque was shut down. The thug faces jail after admitting a racist breach of the peace. But yesterday, he tried to defend his behaviour by claiming he’d been freaked out after viewing a film of a hostage being beheaded. And he claimed he was a reformed character who had turned to religion.

MacGregor bleated: “When all this is over, I will be leaving Scotland. I have had enough of it and the people. I have had nothing but nastiness here.”

Last night, a leading Muslim dismissed his self-pitying squeals as a cynical attempt to obtain a soft sentence. Osama Saeed, chief executive of the Scottish-Islamic Foundation, said:

“If he is insincerely trying to mitigate any punishment, I hope it is not successful. If he had been a Muslim looking at videos of people dying in Iraq and threatened, as a result, to blow up a church or behead Christians, there would have been an absolute storm about this and such an individual would be looking at a really hefty sentence.”

In one threatening email to police – which led to his conviction – MacGregor, 36, wrote: “I’m a proud racist and National Front member. We as an organisation have decided to deal with the current threat from Muslims in our own British way, like our proud ancestors.

“Our demands are very small. Close all mosques in Scotland. We see this is very easy – even you guys can handle that. If our demands aren’t met by next Friday, we’ll kidnap one Muslim and execute him or her on the internet, just like they did to our Ken Bigley.”

But yesterday, the vile racist bleated he felt like the victim following his arrest for the threatening calls and emails regarding Glasgow Central Mosque.

He claimed he became “enraged and emotionally upset” in February 2007 after viewing a video clip of a British hostage being beheaded in Iraq – and made his anti-Muslim threats.

MacGregor claimed to the Record that Osama Saeed had asked to meet him upon the completion of any sentence “to help combat Islamophobia”. But Osama said last night: “His claim is simply not true, though if he is sincere in wanting to tackle Islamophobia after his punishment we would work with him in the same way we would anyone else.”

He added: “It’s all too easy to dismiss MacGregor as a fantasist and lunatic – many of the Muslims convicted of terror offences could be similarly described.”

Daily Record, 22 April 2009

Quilliam Foundation witch-hunts Osama Saeed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Osama and AlexThat latest “Quilliam alert” from Ed Husain and his mates is headlined “Scottish National Party to endorse Islamist candidate“.

It is a disgraceful attack on Osama Saeed, of the Scottish Islamic Foundation, who has been selected as the SNP’s parliamentary candidate for Glasgow Central. Even by Quilliam Foundation standards this really is the pits.

It is increasingly clear that Quilliam are pursuing an hysterical witch-hunting agenda against mainstream Muslim political figures that is almost indistinguishable from the sort of vile propaganda you get from Harry’s Place or the Centre for Social Cohesion.

Continue reading →

Racist escapes terror charge after threat to behead and bomb Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Neil MacGregorThe Crown Office has been accused of double standards by Scotland’s biggest Islamic group for not bringing terrorism charges against a man who threatened to blow up a mosque and behead Muslims.

The Scottish Islamic Foundation (SIF) has written to Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini querying the decision to prosecute Neil MacGregor for a breach of the peace, not terrorism offences.

MacGregor, 35, has admitted threatening to blow up Scotland’s biggest mosque and to behead one Muslim a week until every mosque was shut down. He will be sentenced at Glasgow Sheriff Court on Friday.

“There has been criticism for the lack of exposure this case has got, but this stems from how the case was originally handled,” SIF chief executive Osama Saeed said. “Had he been a Muslim, we suspect that counter-terror police would have been involved from the outset, and it would have been processed in a completely different manner.”

Mr Saeed drew a parallel with the case of Mohammed Atif Siddique, a student from Alva, Clackmannanshire, who was jailed for eight years for internet-related terrorist crimes.

“No-one seems to have looked into the internet habits that radicalised MacGregor to take copycat revenge for (British hostage] Ken Bigley’s assassination in Iraq,” he said. “We can be sure if he had been Muslim and had been inspired to replicate it, the result would have been quite different.”

Continue reading →

Scots equality fund favours Muslims, claims Christian Institute

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamic organisations receive more public funding for ‘equality’ than all other religious groups put together in Scotland, it has been revealed. Almost 60 per cent of all grants given out by the Equality Unit has gone to just five Muslim groups.

The groups were awarded £1.5 million of public money, dwarfing the £137,500 given to Christian charities and the £110,000 given to Jewish organisations. Muslims make up less than one per cent of Scotland’s population but two thirds identify themselves as Christians.

A Labour backbencher George Foulkes said: “I’ve had representatives raise this and they are deeply concerned at the imbalance in the grant allocation.” He warns: “They say not only is it unfair but it’s dangerous.”

Murdo Fraser, the Tory deputy leader stated there was nothing wrong with giving grants to different religious groups but underlined that it had to be “proportionate”. Mr Fraser said: “It would be legitimate to ask why the Government is so focussed on giving such large sums to Muslim groups at the expense of other faiths”.

A representative for the Muslim Council of Scotland accused Mr Foulkes of stirring up trouble between faiths.

A spokesman for First Minister Alex Salmond pointed out that the figures do not include funding from other areas which contribute to charities such as faith schools and aid organisations.

Christian Institute news release, 11 March 2009

The Britsh National Party seizes on this latest example of “the Islamification of Britain”:

“The ‘Equality Unit’ is part of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and runs a series of programmes from its Edinburgh offices including special units devoted to the rights of ‘gypsies, travellers, transgender equality, faith and race equality, and refugees and asylum seekers’. The British National Party has vowed to dismantle the network of anti-white and anti-British organisations which exist only to further discriminate against the indigenous population of this country.”