A most disturbing story from Scotland has not received the attention it should have done south of the border. Last March, a 15 year-old schoolboy, Kriss Donald, was snatched from a Glasgow street by a gang of Asians, driven away and murdered, and his body was then set on fire. He was singled out in this way and murdered simply because he was white. At the High Court in Glasgow last week, Daanish Zahid was found guilty of his abduction and murder, which has been described as a racially motivated crime.

However, as the Scotsman reported, six months before the murder the Glasgow police abandoned an operation to tackle the problem of Asian street gangs in the city because it was not 'politically correct'. Furthermore, the Scottish Executive is now refusing to hold an inquiry into this decision. This has caused widespread protests:

'Bill Aitken, a local Tory MSP, urged the Executive to carry out an inquiry and said: "When it comes to justice and police, there must be an even-handedness. We must ask the question, if an Asian teenager had been murdered by a white gang in such a charged atmosphere, what would the Executive’s response have been?" Margaret Smith, the Liberal Democrats’ justice spokeswoman, said: "I shall be seeking reassurance from the minister as to why [Operation Gadher] was wound up and I would hope the police can reflect on whether this was the right decision or not." Norman Brennan, the founder and director of the Victims of Crime Trust, said: "As a police officer of 26 years service, I can safely say that the majority of officers are sick and tired of political correctness. It prevents us from doing our work properly, from the street right up to homicide. I think it’s about time police chiefs stood up and said 'enough is enough’.'

There is likely to be only one reason for such hypersensitivity: that Kriss Donald's killer was Muslim, and that the problem of 'Asian' street gangs may actually be a Muslim problem. This is not an irrelevant detail, because there is evidence that Muslim youths have a particular animus against western society. There is no evidence that any other Asians have such an animus. That is why there needs to be a proper inquiry, to determine whether this is indeed the case. But such is the climate of intimidation over addressing this issue that the word Muslim is nowhere to be heard, even from those who are protesting about the winding up of the police inquiry and the Executive's decision not to investigate.

This terrible event may have happened in Scotland, but the implications affect the whole country. It's time the mainstream press in the rest of Britain woke up and started to look at Kriss Donald's murder, and ask whether this may have been not a racial but a religious crime -- and what this means for community relations. Will anyone have the bottle to do so?

Posted by melanie at November 23, 2004