Muslims are a subsidiary concern for religion reporting in Scotland’s news media. If journalists must cover religion, issues pertaining to Christian sectarianism still occupy a central focus, although, as more Scots identify with no religion, news reports take on a memorialising tone, marking religion’s decline. Sometimes these storylines merge, as was the case with the biggest religion story in the news during my research about Muslims and the news media in Scotland: the revelation of the sexual abuse of several priests by Cardinal Keith O’Brien (Deveney, 2013). The dominant Scottish story overall was the preparation for the referendum on independence. Muslims played a humble part in coverage of the second story and no part at all in the first.
