UKIP are embroiled in another Islamophobia row after one of the parties MEPs compared a Muslim SNP minister to a convicted terrorist.
Scotland’s UKIP leader, MEP David Coburn, told the Scottish Daily Mail that SNP minister Humza Yousaf was supposed to appear alongside him on the BBC’s Big Immigration Debate on Tuesday, before continuing “Humza Yousaf, or as I call him, Abu Hamza, didn’t seem to turn up.”
Coburn, who is UKIP’s only MEP in Scotland, has not apologised for his comments and instead claimed that they were meant to be private, despite being said directly to a reporter.
Yousaf, the SNP MSP for Glasgow and Scottish Minister for Europe and International Development, said that he was “angry, appalled and upset by David Coburn’s Islamophobic slur” and called on UKIP to expel him form the party.
Abu Hamza is a fundamentalist Islamist cleric who was found guilty and imprisoned for inciting violence in the UK in 2006. He was extradited to the US in 2012, where he was convicted of 11 terrorism charges related to kidnappings in Yemen and attempting to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregan. On 9 January 2015, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Rent-a-gob #UKIP MEP @DavidCoburnUKip refers to Muslim Scottish Gov Minister as 'Abu Hamza' #Islamophobic #equality pic.twitter.com/K7LkFvSjAP
— Rob McDowall MEA (@robmcd85) March 14, 2015
