Erubesco

According to unsympathetic critics, Shakespeare had little Latin and less Greek. If you are as one with this condition, the translation of the title is "I am blushing". Glasgow Airport sustains a terrorist attack by a Muslim group, with all the implications involved in that, and the reaction of the Scottish Daily Record is to be reassured that the would be assassins were not Scots. Bad enough, but again the national mantra is "Wha's like us? Deil the yin.' (Translate; Who is like us? Devil the one.) Reading this in Time Magazine makes it more uncomfortable. Then to read Time's comment that, 'getting fixated on national identities is a plan without a purpose' brings on the erubescence. The author of Times' piece let us off lightly, fixated as we are on national identity. Events have not.

Ensuring that the Muslim community took no fallout from this attack consumed enough political and media energy to change a few lightbulbs in Holyrood. Two examples of this. The Leaping Salmond and his Justice Minister Kenneth McAskill hurried to the chief Glasgow mosque to calm any fears that might exist over Muslims becoming whipping boys. BBC Scotland in an oddly titled and hastily stitched together 'special', 'Scotland After the Bomb', produced the usual format for such emergencies. A studio audience, a panel with two politicians, three Muslims and a presenter. The scene was set by the poster grandfather of Glasgow's Muslims asserting, 'The Islamic faith does not allow terrorism.' Things moved on to troops out of Iraq, back again to the peacefullness of the Muslim community, on to faith schools- do they help or hinder integration. The more familiar the territory the better. And on and on. Two things were missing. There seemed to be little representation of or concern for the people who were the object of the attack and no one really got to the core reasons why this group of professional persons tried to commit mass murder of people they did not even know.