The funding of religious politics (or political religion)

MUSLIM leaders have accused Alex Salmond of blatant cronyism after he handed hundreds of thousands of pounds in public funds to an Islamic group run by an SNP activist.

The Scottish Government has given £215,000 to the Scottish Islamic Foundation (SIF), a group run by Osama Saeed, an SNP member who is about to contest the Glasgow Central seat in the next Westminster election.

I’ve blogged about this group before, specifically about their connections with some individuals and groups with rather unsavoury views. As mentioned in the piece above, the objections to this funding has come from other Muslim groups in Scotland; namely the Glasgow Islamic Centre, the Scottish Afghan Society and representatives of the Muslim Sufi Festival. The Scottish Islamic Foundation also includes amongst its members SNP researcher Humza Yousaf and Gail Lythgoe, the national secretary of SNP Students.

The interesting thing for me though is the low-level reaction from the other two parties in Scotland. Apart from George Foulkes, Labour has been silent on the charges of cronyism leveled against the SNP and the Tories have stressed their continuing support for the SIF. The first impression I get is that they (Labour and the Cons) have been caught on the hop with this one; both had representatives at the SIF’s opening bash, both seem to be extremely wary of wading too far into an inter-Muslim funding battle. Ironically though, even if everything has been done by the book with the SNP on this one, the perception of bias may develop and damage them in the eyes of that segment of the population, particularly in parts of Glasgow, that they seem to be positively courting at the minute. If it is “cronyism”, then it’s not been a very intelligent long-term move on the part of the SNP