What about domestic terrorism against Muslims?

By Yousuf Hamid

Sometimes it is argued that British Muslims have a ‘victim mentality’ where we always believe that we are being treated unfairly by the Government, media and general public and there may indeed be an element of truth in that. However, when we see incidents like the Glasgow Mosque terrorist threat we see that double standards do exist in the media and they do lead to a certain resentment.

In early February Neil MacGregor pleaded guilty to threatening to blow up Glasgow Central Mosque, the biggest mosque in Scotland, as well as threatening to behead one Muslim a week until there were no mosques left in Scotland.

Despite MacGregor pleading guilty to this case and organisations like the Glasgow Anti Racist Alliance and the Scottish Islamic Foundation issuing press releases on the matter there has not been any coverage in the mainstream media at either a Scottish or UK level.

It seems bizarre to many that this is not deemed newsworthy but it is worth conducting a thought experiment into what would happen if the roles were reversed and it was a Muslim extremist who phoned the police saying a bomb was due to go off in the country’s biggest church and then said that we would behead one Christian a week until there were no further church’s in the country.

There would be outrage, and rightly so. There would be endless coverage about the threat and what motivated the perpetrator. There would be interviews with neighbours and friends who would profess shock that someone who seemed so normal was capable of doing such a thing and the family would be interviewed with accusations of a failed upbringing.
And of course there would be the inevitable trotting out of self-appointed ‘community leaders’ offering carefully worded condemnations with a Government minister who would introduce a new initiative with a call that the Muslim community must ‘do more’ to combat terrorism and attempted terrorism.

Yet in this situation there was none of that. No condemnations. No community leader condemnations. No analysis into the family or motivations of the perpetrator. In fact there was no coverage at all as this story was completely ignored.

No one is saying that there is a vast conspiracy by the mainstream media to undermine Muslims across the country. The problem here is the double standards that we see where only some forms of terrorism are deemed newsworthy and this leads to a resentment that plays right into the hands of the far right.

This is why it is so important that the media cover this story now. If multiculturalism is to work (as I believe it can) then there can not be an ‘us and them’ culture and when the media choose to ignore these stories because it does not fit into the current narrative of stories about terrorism then this division is created which can be exploited by those with sinister motives.

Yet whilst the mainstream media has overwhelmingly failed it’s duty to report there has been a campaign which is gathering momentum. I was struck after mentioning this story a few weeks ago on my own blog by the responses I got with people emailing me detailing their anger at the double standards of the media.

So since then I got in touch with some fellow bloggers about the issue and set up a Facebook group to facilitate the lobbying of the press to convince them to report the case when Neil MacGregor get’s sentenced on the 17th of April.

Since then the story has been picked up by other bloggers and the Facebook group has over 400 members within a week. A real momentum is building with more people joining every day and more emails being sent.

In response to that some newspapers have said that they will report the case on sentencing days but as of yet there have been no confirmation by any broadcast media that they will cover the sentencing. However, the way the media is operating is changing.

If a bottom-up approach like has taken place here can really change the news agenda then it will be a massive step forward in ensuring that there can be balance and the media will have to report what is actually going on rather than following any agendas or particular narratives.

They can’t ignore us forever.