A man has admitted to threatening to blow up Glasgow Central Mosque, and behead one Muslim a week until every mosque in Scotland was shut down.

The proceedings at Glasgow Sheriff Court regarding Neil MacGregor, who sent the threats to Strathclyde Police as a National Front member, are reported in the latest edition of the Digger and have caused extreme alarm in the Muslim community.

Osama Saeed of the Scottish-Islamic Foundation said:

“I hope that he is dealt with in exactly the same manner as an extremist who was Muslim would be.

“This latest episode underscores the need for effective action tackling Islamophobia. The far right use fear of Muslims as a cloak for their old overt racism. They should realise they follow the same ideology as Al-Qaeda when they target an entire community for violence.”

Bashir Maan, President of Glasgow Central Mosque said:

“I’m surprised there hasn’t been more coverage of this. I could imagine the controversy and analysis there would have been if he had been a Muslim doing this to non-Muslims.”

Last year in Glasgow, Mary McKay was sentenced to six years for stabbing a Muslim man in the chest. She said: "I hope the guy is dead. I just stabbed a guy with the same colour of skin as a terrorist. I just saw the two Pakis and he had an NY on his top.”

Mosques across Scotland have been subject of attacks. As well as in Glasgow, this includes Edinburgh, Falkirk, Bathgate and Stirling.

The last Scottish Government Social Attitudes Survey found that half of Scots saw Muslims as a “cultural threat” to the country.

In the recent past, far right extremists have been found guilty of possessing explosives and planning to use them, for example Robert Cottage and Martyn Gilleard.

[ENDS]

Notes
The Digger, the weekly Glasgow publication reported:

The court heard how 35-year-old MacGregor admitted sending a race hate email to Strathclyde Police threatening to blow up [Glasgow Central] Mosque if certain demands weren’t met.

Included in the chilling message was a threat to behead one Muslim a week in the same manner construction worker Ken Bigley was killed after he was kidnapped in Iraq in 2004.

MacGregor followed the email up with a 999 call to cops on February 5, 2007.

The court was told that during the brief call MacGregor claimed he was from the National Front and that a bomb was going to go off.

He said: “A bomb will go off in the Central Mosque later this week. Now f*** off.”

Cops raced to the Mosque to search it for explosive devices, but failed to locate anything suspicious.

...

In his vile email the Derbyshire man who’s staying at his mother’s home in Crieff, ordered that the cops close down every mosque in Scotland.

He wrote: “I’m Frank McAlpine and I’m a proud racist and National Front member. We as an organisation have decided to deal with the current threat from Muslims in our own British way like our proud ancestors.

“Our demands are very small. Close all the Mosques in Scotland, we see this is very easy – even you guys can handle that.”

He then issued a barrage of sickening threats, centering on the internet killing of Ken Bigley.

He wrote: “If our demands aren’t met by next Friday we’ll kidnap one Muslim and execute him or her on the internet, just like they did to our Ken Bigley.

“Those monster evil Muslims cut off his head with a kitchen knife, so we would like to repay the compliment. Every week we’ll kidnap and behead a Muslim if our demands aren’t met.”

... “We will also detonate a box of nails in the Central Mosque on Friday night.”

MacGregor will have to wait four weeks until he’s sentenced on Friday March 6.

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Further reading:

When terrorism isn't newsworthy - blog post by Osama Saeed