Glasgow Conference to Energise Opposition to Islamophobia in Scotland

A conference in Glasgow will look at the impact of Islamophobia on Scotland’s Muslim community. This comes at a time of racist, Islamophobic and violent protests outside hotels housing asylum-seekers. And against a background of increasingly racist and repressive policies enacted by the UK Government, and UK complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Scotland Against Criminalising Communities is holding the conference at the Ark, in Glasgow’s Southside, on Sunday 14 December. The London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission is co-organising. It’s the first such conference in Scotland since 2019.

A partner conference took place in London a week earlier. It focused on the theme “From Freedom to Comfort: How the State Redefined Conscience as Extremism.”

The Scotland conference will develop ideas from the London event and move on to the theme “Reclaiming Resistance.”

Remembering Sheku Bayoh

The Glasgow Conference will include an emergency session with lawyer Aamer Anwar to examine the crisis facing the public inquiry into the death of Sheku Bayoh.

Aamer Anwar said:

When Sheku died in police custody over a decade ago, the crown failed to ensure a robust and impartial investigation. And that is why the Lord Advocate himself asked the Scottish Government for a public inquiry.

What unfolded terrified an unholy trinity of Crown Office, Scottish Police Federation and the Police, because it exposed a culture of incompetence, unlawfulness and institutional racism – a total betrayal.

Yet although justice is delayed the family will not stop fighting for it. This conference takes place at one of the most dangerous times in modern history.

There can be no room for complacency as the far right are on the march and many of our politicians are willing to get in the sewers just to gain popularity. We must unite and fight back.

The Bayoh family will always be grateful to Scotland Against Criminalising Communities for being the first to support their struggle.

Tackling rising Islamophobia in Scotland

Chair of the Islamic Human Rights Commission Massoud Shadjareh set the scene:

The environment of hate is becoming more dominant in our society, promoted by politicians, media and others.

The fact of the matter is that politicians who are bankrupt in addressing our needs and aspirations are using this otherisation to demonise one section of society and mobilise another.

We need to challenge this, because this level of vilification leads to genocide, be it in Gaza or what happened earlier in Bosnia.

Richard Haley, spokesperson for Scotland Against Criminalising Communities, added:

Our conference comes at a critical moment. Islamophobia and racism is on display in the streets around asylum hotels at an intensity and regularity we have never seen before in Scotland.

Far-right organisations and the UK Government are stoking the hate in different ways in pursuit of their own goals.

The UK Government has enabled genocide in Gaza and is now trying to airbrush it away.

Broad-based civil society organisations like Palestine Action are facing the kind of repression previously more familiar to Muslims.

I hope our conference will help to widen and deepen resistance to all this.

Featured image via the Canary