Omar Raza was walking near his home in Glasgow’s south side when he was confronted by three men hurling racist abuse, calling him a “fucking Paki” and accusing him of funding Islamic State.
“It was three against one, so I tried to defuse the situation and walk past them. But I was suddenly attacked from behind and put in a head lock.” Raza was kicked to the ground and the bag he was carrying upturned and its contents strewn across the pavement, before his attackers ran off.
“It all happened so quickly,” he told the Guardian on Thursday ahead of Friday prayers at Glasgow Central mosque. “Of course I’ve been the victim of hate speech before, but never a physical assault. You hear a lot of stories from down south but the south side of Glasgow is supposed to be a diverse community. It’s obvious that what’s going on [in Paris] is seeping into society and a lot of people are acting on half-truths.”
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He has been unimpressed by media coverage of the Paris attacks. “The destruction in Paris was awful but unfortunately the media has created a brand of what is safe to support, so they romanticise a city like Paris, but with Syria or Palestine there are darker aspects that people don’t want to embrace.
“On social media it’s about how you project who you support. People are doing that by very hollow means like changing their photo to a flag.”
Mohammed Nawaz Ali, 23, a Glasgow grocer, agreed: “On the news apps, you see the first six or seven stories are on Paris, someone who survived, someone who was caught, but there’s a lot happening in other countries, the same number of deaths every single day.” Full story...
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“It was three against one, so I tried to defuse the situation and walk past them. But I was suddenly attacked from behind and put in a head lock.” Raza was kicked to the ground and the bag he was carrying upturned and its contents strewn across the pavement, before his attackers ran off.
“It all happened so quickly,” he told the Guardian on Thursday ahead of Friday prayers at Glasgow Central mosque. “Of course I’ve been the victim of hate speech before, but never a physical assault. You hear a lot of stories from down south but the south side of Glasgow is supposed to be a diverse community. It’s obvious that what’s going on [in Paris] is seeping into society and a lot of people are acting on half-truths.”
(...)
He has been unimpressed by media coverage of the Paris attacks. “The destruction in Paris was awful but unfortunately the media has created a brand of what is safe to support, so they romanticise a city like Paris, but with Syria or Palestine there are darker aspects that people don’t want to embrace.
“On social media it’s about how you project who you support. People are doing that by very hollow means like changing their photo to a flag.”
Mohammed Nawaz Ali, 23, a Glasgow grocer, agreed: “On the news apps, you see the first six or seven stories are on Paris, someone who survived, someone who was caught, but there’s a lot happening in other countries, the same number of deaths every single day.” Full story...
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