A story that is disturbing for a chain of reasons has just come out from our state-funded broadcaster. On the BBC's website today, headlined 'Muslim concern at stop and search' the site leads with the news that:
'Muslims in Scotland have expressed unease about the use of "stop and search" procedures at Glasgow Airport.'
In any season this is a story likely to spread irritation among the British public.
But on reading through it emerges that the 'Muslims' expressing 'unease' at being searched at Glasgow airport are actually the Scottish Islamic Foundation (SIF). Readers might remember that this group was exposed last month, prior to its launch, as a Muslim Brotherhood-linked organisation whose members are, as lecturer in Divinity at Glasgow University Amanullah de Sondy put it, likely to:
'further [reinforce] isolationist approaches to education and hamper attempts at building bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims.'
Since its launch and its exposure as a Brotherhood-linked organisation, the SIF (whose Chief Executive is also a Scottish National Party activist) has received £215,000 from Alex Salmond's SNP administration.
The iniquity of this is that the founders of the SIF can truthfully claim to represent almost nobody. But Salmond has been (to put it at its kindest) duped, public money has come rolling in, and next thing the BBC is willing to portray such an unrepresentative group as representative of 'Muslims' in Scotland.
Of course the Glasgow airport that the SIF is complaining about being searched at is the same airport which suffered an attempted terrorist attack last summer. If airports were in any case good places to stop and search people, Glasgow airport might be considered a specially good place to do so.
But this is really not the point. The point is this is how things fall apart. Public money goes to sectarian political groups who then claim to speak for thousands of co-religionists they have never met and before long the BBC is willing to credit them not just with authority but comprehensive representational abilities.
