Johnson’s burka ‘gaffe’ a deliberate attempt to stir up anti-muslim hysteria

Boris Johnson’s latest comment attacking Muslims (Scotsman, 7 August) was not a “gaffe”. It was a strategy of scapegoating and political filth thought up by Trump’s strategist Steve Bannon.

Johnson and other senior Brexiteer MPS Jacob Rees Mogg and Michael Gove recently met with Steve Bannon. Bannon is a fanatical nativist. He masterminded Trump’s election to the US Presidency. Johnson is now enacting a ploy thought up by Bannon. They know that Brex- it will be a disaster of Biblical proportions. The Brexiteers are seeking to whip-up antimuslim hysteria for their own political ends.

However the self-righteous indignation by Johnston’s fellow Tories and media figures, who claim they are shocked by his statements should be, dismissed with contempt. The blathering of this offensive imbecile expresses only in more concentrated form the perpetual hysteria one hears every day. Johnson is the product of a diseased political environment. Johnson’s attack on Muslims, however, is the latest episode in a campaign which has been ongoing for some 15 years. Since the so-called “war on terror” was declared 15 years ago Muslims have been targeted.

During every imperialist war, the government seeks to cultivate the most backward and racist sentiments. The “war on terror,” which has led to the deaths of at least a million Muslims, is no different, creating an environment in which racist hysteria is relentlessly promoted in the media. In 2008 the Cardiff School of Journalism did a survey of newspaper articles on Muslims in UK newspapers. It involved nearly 1,000 articles written since the year 2000, noting the content and context of articles pertaining to Muslims and Islam.

The findings showed that 69 percent of the articles presentedmuslims as a source of problems not justin terms of terrorism but also on cultural issues, and that 26 percent of the articles portrayed islam as dangerous, backward or irrational. Since the Blair years there has been an established pattern. The government’s response to any and every questioning of its foreign and domestic agenda is to resort to the crudest forms of political propaganda based on nationalism, xenophobia and efforts to panic the population with the threat of terrorist atrocities.

ALAN HINNRICHS Gillespie Terrace, Dundee

Evidently Boris Johnson doesn’t know his burka from his niqab). Neither do his critics. The one that looks like a “letter box” (pillar box?) is the niqab. The burkha shows nothing except what looks like a ventilation grill and I don’t think is worn in the UK.

Mr Johnson’s remarks cannot be Islamophobic as, according to most Muslim scholars, Islam does not require such dress. It’s just a dress choice, albeit one that most people would regard as anti-social. STEUART CAMPBELL Dovecot Loan, Edinburgh