A national leader in the UK, in a visit to a mosque in Edinburgh on Monday, told Muslims in the country that the government is “on their side” as civil strife in response to mass migration broke out in England and Northern Ireland over the past week.
First Minister John Swinney, the head of the locally-devolved leftist government in the nation of Scotland — one of four nations in the United Kingdom — met with Muslim community leaders at the Edinburgh Central Mosque to express the state’s solidarity with the Islamic community.
His visit came amid protests and riots in Britain following the mass stabbing at a children’s dance party last week that left three young girls dead and eight others injured at the alleged hands of a second-generation Rwandan migrant youth. The protests that followed rapidly took on a generally anti-mass-migration character.
Despite no protests breaking out so far in Scotland, Swinney said, according to the Daily Record: “My visit today has been designed to say to a community that’s feeling very, very nervous that the government is on their side and is supporting them to ensure their safety.”
The head of the leftist-separatist Scottish National Party (SNP) added: “To anyone who contemplates acting against that – the full force of the law is available to ensure that any such behaviour will be addressed.”
The First Minister also said that he had held talks with Jo Farrell, the Chief Constable of Police Scotland, the top law enforcement officer in the country, and that there is a “sophisticated” police campaign to monitor social media posts to quickly quell any anti-mass migration actions taken in Scotland.
This came as members of his own far-left Scottish National Party (SNP) effectively expressed support for the leftist and Islamic communities to police the streets of Scotland as effective vigilantes to confront the so-called “far-right.”
Afro-Caribbean heritage SNP Glasgow City Councillor Graham Campbell and Trinidad and Tobago-born Shelly-Ann Brown, the SNP’s “National BAME (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic) Convener,” wrote in The National newspaper that the police could not be trusted to “defend” the public.
Therefore, they called on their supporters to “occupy” critical areas of Glasgow and to “oppose racists on the streets to ensure our own safety given the track record of Police Scotland has been lacking in policing fascist groups compared to what force they use on pro-Palestine, climate and anti-racism protesters.”
While the media and political establishment has focused their ire on the violent riots from mostly ethnic British men against mass migration, there has been a growing recognition that Muslim groups are also playing a role in stoking divisions, with many taking to the streets in large vigilante gangs often dubbed on social media as the “Muslim Defence League.”
This came through the airwaves of Sky News this week, albeit unintentionally, as a female reporter’s live segment in Birmingham was interrupted by a group of masked men shouting expletives and “Free Palestine” as they approached. The men were seen making gun gestures with their fingers to the camera before the feed was cut off.
Sky News later published footage they recorded as their convoy of vehicles left the “Free Palestine” counter-protest area when a balaclava-wearing man drew a knife and attempted to slash the tyres of one of their vehicles.
Commenting on the incident, Reform UK MP Richard Tice said: “Starmer [and] Labour no doubt think these pro Gaza masked folk are far right too? All violence, rioting and assault is totally unacceptable. Two tier policing must stop.”
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