Muslim leaders warned that a wave of hate crimes was sweeping across Scotland as police hunted a hammer-wielding gang of 10 men who yelled abuse about the London bombings as they attacked two young Asians.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that crimes including verbal racist abuse have increased in Glasgow, Edinburgh and elsewhere north of the border since the July 7 terror attacks.
Osama Saeed, of the Muslim Association of Britain in Scotland, said he believed that many more incidents were going unreported. He said:
“Anecdotally, we’ve heard many more accounts of racist attacks against Muslims in the last month. Unfortunately, there is a lack of confidence in the Muslim community that their complaints will be believed or taken seriously so they often don’t feel confident enough to report it.”
Update: See also “Hate crimes up by 20-per-cent in Scotland”, The Herald, 4 August 2005