Monday 6 April 2009

Selective attention?

Yapping Yousuf, the blog of Scottish Labour activist Yousuf Hamid, has been highlighting the lack of mainstream media interest in the trial of Neil MacGregor.


Neil MacGregor has pleaded guilty to not only trying to blow up Scotland's biggest Mosque but also to threatening to behead one Muslim a week until there are no more Mosques in Scotland.

It's a shocking attack with extremely sinister objectives. Surely if anything is newsworthy then this is it?

Yet there's been barely a peep from any media outlets. I wonder why there has been no press coverage on this at all. Would it be different if it was a Muslim extremist trying to blow up a church or synagogue?


This has been picked up by Frank McAveety MSP in the Scottish Parliament.


That the Parliament condemns any threat to personal liberty or a person’s place of worship; recognises that it is a duty of the free press and media in Scotland to be even-handed when reporting issues of terrorism and threats; expresses disappointment that recent threats to Glasgow Central Mosque and threats to behead one Muslim a week have been under-reported, and calls for the media to ensure that abhorrent acts of terrorism are covered regardless of the perpetrators.


And there is a Facebook campaign arguing for coverage of the sentencing on April 17th.

On the face of it, Hamid has a good argument here. My only note of caution is that I don't know anything more about the case.

Meanwhile, the Sunday Herald did report yesterday on a liberalising generational shift at the Glasgow Central Mosque:


A decade-long battle between Scotland's Muslim old guard and a new generation of reformers has been won by the young liberals who will now move into positions of power in the country's largest mosque.

The clash is being interpreted as a battle between older believers who define themselves as Pakistani and younger ones who see themselves as Scottish-British. Young muslims have been pushing for reform at Glasgow's Central Mosque for 10 years.


Hat tip to Pickled Politics. Iain Dale has also flagged up Yousuf's campaign.

1 comment:

Newmania said...

Onan the Barbarian has banished me from Liberal Conspiracy (because I took exception of allowing a comment referring to me as a fucking cunt and repeated it to make the point it was unacceptable ). This of course confirms what we always knew about Socialism Democracy . I shall be popping in to frustrate your Marxist attempts to remove my hard earned money and distribute it to charities of Polly Toynbee`s choosing from time to time .

Unless of Onan actually gets power and I am in a Hebridean Gulag