A man has been charged following a series of suspected anti-Muslim attacks in Edinburgh that left five men injured. The attacks began near a mosque in the west of the city, where two men were injured and footage posted on social media appears to show a man – bare-chested and carrying a large weapon – vandalising a petrol station and smashing a pizzeria door several miles away on Leith Walk before being detained by police.
That anti-Muslim racist attacks should be on the increase given the climate of hate being whipped up by politicians and some sections of the media should come as no surprise. It is the product of right-wing forces, both in politics and in the media, whipping people into a false frenzy of hatred and division. What is also worth noting though, is the massive contrast between the media coverage of the Edinburgh attack and the 29 April Golders Green stabbings of two Jewish men.
At Golders Green, a Muslim man armed with a knife attacked his friend, another Muslim man in Southwark (an incident hardly mentioned at the time) and then later attacked two Jewish men in the Golders Green area of the London Borough of Barnet. The suspect, a 45-year-old born in Somalia, was arrested by police and charged with attempted murder. The incident was followed by wall-to-wall coverage in the media where antisemitism was highlighted repeatedly and politicians of all stripes waded in to have their say.
The UK government held an emergency COBRA meeting to coordinate its response to the attacks, the latter of which was declared a terrorist incident by the Metropolitan Police. Contrast all that with the Edinburgh attacks, where after some initial media coverage, the news has now been relegated way down the BBC website and there has been no talk of an emergency government COBRA meeting to review these attacks on Muslims.
Within hours of the Golders Green attacks, the police announced that they were treating the stabbings as terrorism. That is the latter stabbings, not the initial attack on a Muslim man. At the time, the journalist Mehdi Hasan questioned why the Metropolitan Police had initially reported the attacks as having only two victims, which he described as “airbrushing” over the Muslim man’s stabbing.
Contrast the coverage of this weekend’s Edinburgh attacks with Golders Green. One received blanket media coverage, politicians’ outrage, the police declaring it a terrorist attack and the government organising a COBRA meeting. The other incident got none of that.
Why? Frankly, it’s pretty hard to see any explanation other than crude, overt racism.
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