When is a bigot a bigot? Always, and they usually don’t take a lot of coaxing to reveal their stunted worldview. The internet helps, a lot. Football rivalry usually speeds along the process, too.

As Celtic celebrated their Scottish Cup final win over Hibs, and domestic double, a casual viewer spotted a tricolour adorned with what they read as: Achill Islam CSC.

Crucial detail here, the flag reads Achill Island CSC. Not that, in any mind approaching sanity, the presence of a flag with ‘Islam’ written on it should have been a problem. See the flag below.



On the week of British soldier Lee Rigby’s horrific murder, however, this was a red rag to a disgruntled bigot. Said bigot’s reaction was presumably made several notches more vitriolic as they had just had their blood pressure and, presumably low, tolerance for tolerance pushed to their limits by seeing Celtic secure a domestic double.



Take ignorance, energise with anger. Remove care for a moment’s thought and add the internet.

So to Twitter we go, where a rumour spreads, morphs, mutates and offends at fibre optic speeds, while the truth, and reason, is lost beneath a sea of white noise.

As you can see from the screen grab above it appears the mere sight of the word Islam (Or misreading of it, in this case) at the Scottish Cup final is an outrage. Its display is the behaviour of “scum”, is “anti-British” sentiment and is tantamount to celebrating the horrific death of a young soldier on a London street. One even tells the world that Celtic Football Club (seemingly the entire club, not just one fan) “flew a banner in support of Islam”. I’m not even sure how that would work.

Several Celtic fans have responded with the obvious retort of: So what?

(h/t to the lads at Joe.ie for spotting this one)