Not Gods

The New Anti-Racism agenda fails to acknowledge the full humanity of all people and creates immense risk

Last week I heard about this individual.

Muhammed Akram was a sometime neighbour to me here in Pollokshields, Glasgow. Imagine my horror to discover offences against women and children going back 40 years. Akram was convicted of nine charges of physically and sexually abusing three women between 2010 and 2021, including while one was pregnant. In 2003, he was given a seven-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl. He was then convicted in 2012 of abusing a four-year-old girl while he was still out on licence. Some of the multiple rapes and assaults happened while he was subject to a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO), which he successfully appealed in 2017. The decision to remove the SOPO was thought to be the first of its kind in Scotland. It took another six years of rape and physical assault for him finally to get an indeterminate sentence.

That he was able to continue to abuse and rape women and children, that he was found guilty of murder and still walked free, and was in my community should shake anyone to their core. How could this happen?

But mostly my heart breaks for his victims, also my neighbours, who were not given the support they should have. The women who came forward to seek justice showed exceptional bravery. I have to wonder how many people around these abused women and children were complicit or willingly blind to the harm being done. Had the courts done their due diligence and held him to account much suffering might have been alleviated. (to be clear I do not know him or his victims personally)

There is much smoke around developing new guidance around anti-racism programs in schools and workplaces. There is much fear cultivated within certain circles that the ‘far right’ is coming for them. I don’t doubt there are racist people ‘out there’. However it concerns me that in that smoke of fear we may fail to acknowledge men like Akram who are doing tremendous and horrifying harm. Will people not come forward for fear of being called ‘racist’?

Akram does not ‘represent’ ‘my community’ by any metric. The diversity of Pollokshields, the community I love which I have been part of for decades could fill the pages of an infinite novel and goes far beyond any superficial characteristic one might suppose. But he did live here, for a time. And he did perpetrate horrific crimes. And that, regardless of skin colour, is always possible. Because we are human. Because being fully human means we are all capable of good and bad. Failing to acknowledge that denies our full fallible humanity. And by creating a false metric of victimhood and oppressor along lines of racial characteristics we unwittingly create a shield for predators. And that helps no one.

It goes without saying racism is a bad thing. Anyone who discriminates against someone based upon their skin colour should be held to account (and is an idiot). What is the best way to address racism? I’ve always been a Reverend King fan. His quote: ‘I Look to A Day When People Will Not Be Judged by The Color of Their Skin, But by The Content of Their Character’ is apt, just and forward thinking. As is this one:

…with the added layer of us seeing each other as ‘brothers’ (and sisters). Families are funny things. We all have mad relatives and disagreements amongst ourselves over the course of time, but we shoulder on. We look out for each other as autonomous individuals part of a whole. Calling each other out, as necessary, and (more often then not) forgiving one another. We are all imperfect, flawed, bumbling along in this human experience, hopefully with some celebration mixed in for good measure.

But this is not the message being promoted in education. The new anti-racism program being embedded in Scottish schools teaches that white people have an ‘inherent badness’ and that people with pigment in their skin are ‘inherently victims’. Anytime a ‘person of colour’ is denied a job or opportunity? Racism. Not their skills, quality of work, or talent. It dehumanises people on the basis of their skin colour. How can this be moral, ethical or appropriate for education?

This is a stupid and dangerous way to view the world. Not only does it rob individuals of personal agency, it suggests there is no such thing as free will as we are denied the opportunity to form our own judgements about people based on the “radical” notion of getting to know them. It is nihilistic as it brainwashes ‘BAME’ children to think they are not capable of success unless a ‘white’ person gives it to them. (in other words: racist).

This new ideology with its cult-like narrow parameters does not acknowledge free will. It suggests that no matter how hard you work as a ‘black’ child, it will not matter, you will fail because of ‘racism’. It teaches ‘white’ children that they are inherently bad. It does not acknowledge that we are all capable of bad as well as good. If we acknowledge this then we see our inherent responsibility to make good choices, and to live well. Instead it abdicates personal responsibility instead manifesting a inescapable ‘godly caste’.

But none of us are gods.

I recall the Kenmure Street ‘happening’ in 2021. It happened on my corner. I find it astounding that everyone in that ‘sit in’ (on that sunny day enjoying themselves with no actual risk or effort to themselves) assumed those men were innocent. It is astonishing that the appearance of a police van (at 9am) made these sitting individuals ASSUME the police were corrupt, that they were *not* doing their job.

The more I think about this whole story the more ridiculous it becomes. What actually happened is more mockumentary than hard hitting journalism. (Add to comedy value I was there in my Disco Chicken Suit in the morning). And yet TWO documentary films are currently being made (!). I am preparing myself to laugh my arse off as two dudes who didn't pay their council tax is spun out as some big protest against THE MAN. Thinking on this and the sheepish look of the men standing next to the HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER Aamer Anwar as they were ‘saved’ says it all really. (and Anwar went to school here, he knows it’s a hustle) A Scots Asian pal who lives locally recounted how she laughed at the “Black Lives Matter” signs in the windows of the converted. Comical.

Save a core social justice minded local cohort, the majority of attendees at the sit in were not even *from* Pollokshields. That this is drawn as some great story of local solidarity is ludicrous. Many neighbours expressed disappointment that two men who couldn’t be arsed to get their act together (having secured work and marriage visa previous for some reason they didn’t get another) were being celebrated, when the good majority of ‘migrants’ (including myself) had ‘done the work’ in order to live and stay here. But I digress. It’s really laughable.

Then I heard from people ‘on the street’ is that these were ‘nice guys’. How did they know? How did they know anything? What? The fact that they smiled as they passed them in the hallway? That they didn’t see them setting things on fire? Did someone, somewhere have a magic crystal ball into these men’s souls?

What if the individuals *had* been Akram? And they had unwittingly protected a serial rapist and murderer? The fact is no one knew who those men were or what they were being charged with. The fact that they were just lazy ass men who couldn’t be arsed to follow up on their paper work for immigration status and were caught out for not paying council tax makes the whole thing comical at best. That one of the men was not ‘a good husband’ is another part of the story. And not mine to tell. But let’s just say they were not living their best lives. These men: human. Fallible. Not heroic.

We must always be ready to meet people where they are, based on their actions and moral character. We must strive to teach our children that we are all embued with human dignity regardless of our physical or life circumstances. And we must remind ourselves every single person is capable of good and bad. And it’s not up to us to predict it, but to see things as they are and act accordingly. And that because we do have free will we must use it wisely. And if we can do that, well then we might just build a better, more just world.

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