Molly case reveals hidden prejudice

AGAINST the background of shame and anger at what's being done in our name in Iraq, and the consequent reprisals, many of those who hoped against hope that the degree of difference in the Scots' attitude to Islam, and Muslims who've chosen to live in Scotland, would withstand the pressures dividing communities in England.

But the reaction to the story of Misbah Iram Ahmed Rana, or Molly Campbell to us, sweeps away much of our proud claim to be more tolerant and understanding than is often the case in many English cities.

Probably quite unwittingly, a 12-year-old Asian Scot has shown many of us to be suspicious and mistrustful of Muslims. Perhaps the situation arises out of the July 2005 bomb in London, perhaps because of a lack of knowledge about Islamic beliefs and practices, and the different forms of Islam. Perhaps it's because of the shock felt north and south of the Border that so many people born and brought up in the UK should plot and prepare to kill and maim so many of their fellow-citizens.

No matter the reason, the uncomfortable, part-submerged prejudice here in the birthplace of Jock Tamson's bairns, and the country whose national poet-hero wrote that "man tae man, the world o'er, shall brithers be" has been dragged into full view by the way the Scottish community, and not just the Scottish press, reacted to the news that Misbah had gone to Pakistan with her father.

Cross my heart and hope to die, but when I heard the second radio news bulletin on the story, I shared with my husband my unease that we were hearing only one side of the story.

(The first news of Molly's abduction had no detail, only the conclusion that the reason for her failure to return home to her mother was that she had been abducted/kidnapped and taken to Pakistan by her father.)

The allegation that she would enter into a forced, arranged marriage with a man "more than twice her age" was reported without query, comment or the source of the claim.

"Wait a minute", was my reaction when the MP for the Western Isles said he was going to see the Pakistani prime minister when he visited London.

Before diving in at the deep end, it's sensible to check the depth of the water, and we had precious little to justify such a high-powered intervention - other than unacknowledged prejudice against arranged marriage, that many of us carelessly assume is Islamic custom, and no different from forced marriage.

Also, it didn't sound likely to me that a 12-year-old, who was probably quite street-wise, having come through her parents' divorce, would be easy to abduct against her will. However, that was simply assumption on my part, and that's why journalists are duty-bound to check and check again that they've got all the facts, and then report only the facts that stand up. Unchecked facts, like the "arranged marriage", are simply gossip.

When I saw the TV interview with Bashir Maan in which he pointed out the unlikelihood of the missing girl's father foisting a forced marriage on his youngest child when his elder married son and daughter had chosen their partners, I was nearly as angry as he was that such allegations had been reported without caveat, or without having been checked.

Bashir is one of the most respected Pakistani Muslims to settle in Scotland. He doesn't claim to have been insulted, or assaulted, as frequently as some of the Young Turk Asians we've seen sounding off on TV from Wolverhampton or Bradford or Birmingham. But his controlled, dignified response couldn't completely hide his anger that such assumptions should be made about how a man would treat his daughter simply because he is a Muslim.

As everyone knows now, Misbah was not abducted against her will. But there appears little desire to atone for their mistake amongst those whose prejudice against Islam provoked such a willingness to believe, without proof, the worst of Misbah's father and again, without proof of her behaviour as opposed to her genuine grief at the loss of her daughter, the essential goodness of Misbah's mother.

Yet we must find a way of admitting we got the wrong end of the stick. To do nothing to admit our collective mistake will just make it easier for hate-filled Muslims to win converts to their way of thinking rather than give Bashir Maan, Mohammed Sarwar and their like the ammunition to prove to young Muslims growing up here that with lawful, patient determination they will overcome the prejudice, springing from a lack of communication and understanding, laid bare by Misbah Iram Rana's preference for an Islamic way of life rather than a post-Christian moral maze.

It's time to keep a no profile

WELL, we're back. This is potentially the worst bit of fixed, four-year parliaments. Those of us wanting to come back have to face the electors next May - that's the easy bit of this fag-end time in a parliament's life. The difficult bit is keeping cool, calm and collected for the next seven and a half months while every candidate in the place weighs up every word according to what "the voter" is supposed to want to hear.

I wish I could meet this voter person, and save myself the work involved in trying to respond suitably to the hundreds, no thousands, of individual needs, unfairnesses, opinions and talents, fulfilled and thwarted, that comprise the experience of people in Lothian I've worked with as an MSP.

The longer I'm in the business, the less I believe in "profiling" the voter as political parties now do.