Is Islam To Blame for the Grooming Gangs? Part One

A week after voting against a national inquiry into the predominantly-Pakistani rape gangs, which tortured white working-class girls in over fifty of Britain’s towns and cities, the Labour government jumped aboard what Keir Starmer called a “far right bandwagon” by commissioning a series of local inquiries. However, the inquiries announced by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper are not the national inquiry that opposition MPs, the victims, and a majority of Brits support. Polling by Friderichs Advisory and JL Partners last week found that 73 percent of the public — including 75 percent of women and non-whites, and 73 percent of Labour voters — want a national inquiry into the grooming gang scandal.

The government’s new limited local inquiries will only take place in five towns, and have no statutory powers to compel witnesses to give evidence. The budget for these limited inquiries are only £10 million — whereas the foreign aid budget committed to Pakistan this year is £133 million. Labour hide behind their instance that implementing the safeguarding recommendations made by Professor Alexis Jay’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) is sufficient. But as shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp pointed out, IICSA only examined six towns. Rotherham was mentioned once; whereas Oxford, Oldham, Telford, Bradford, and the forty other locations where these gangs operate were not mentioned at all. (And whereas Oldham requested a national inquiry and were denied, Bradford’s inquiry has been consistently blocked by local authorities.) And while the scope of IICSA was wide, its findings were sanitised. The only references to “Asian” or “Pakistani” relate to the ethnicity of victims — not perpetrators. Mentions of “Muslim” or “Islam” have no relation to the role of religion in motivating the rape gangs.

The denial that ethnicity or religion in any way influenced the rape gangs is often repeated in Parliament. Independent Muslim MP, Shockat Adam accused “an overseas bad-faith actor” (Elon Musk) of “using truly horrific cases of group-based child rape to demonise a community”. Brandishing a bump on his forehead from prolonged prayer, Adam then insisted the “real issue here” is not the rape gangs themselves, but rather that “if victims are being falsely told that perpetrators look a certain way or are part of a certain community, they will have a false sense of security when they are with people who do not fit that stereotype.” As the old Norm MacDonald joke goes, “What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?”

London Mayor, newly-knighted Sir Sadiq Khan also chose to play dumb when questioned by former rival candidate, Susan Hall about how many grooming gangs London has. Despite receiving the highest concentration of immigration for decades, and a rape reported every hour in London, a London-based rape gang has yet to be convicted. This seems improbable; but is not something that Mayor Khan seems interested in. Hall stopped short of accurately characterising the “gangs of people” committing these heinous crimes as Pakistani Muslim — perhaps fearing accusations of racism from Khan. 

In 2020, when London Assembly member, David Kurten asked a similar question, Khan accused Kurten of prejudice against his religion and ethnicity, and Chairman Navin Shah ruled that Kurten’s question was disregarded.

As Philp mentioned, this wilful blindness to the ethnic and religious composition of the rape gangs “is exactly what led to the victims being ignored and the crimes covered up in the first place.” Louise Casey wrote in her 2015 report on Rotherham that social workers, trying to blow the whistle on the use of taxi services to traffic girls, had to euphemise Pakistani drivers as “men of a certain ethnicity, engaged in a particular occupation.”

“If we mentioned Asian taxi drivers we were told we were racist and the young people were seen as prostitutes.” A former social worker. 

“…you couldn’t bring up race issues in meetings… or you would be branded a racist.” A key partner.

“The number one priority was to preserve and enhance the [Pakistani heritage] community – which wasn’t an unworthy goal but it wasn’t right at the time. It was difficult to stand up in a meeting and say that the perpetrators were from the Pakistani Heritage community and were using the taxi system – even though everyone knew it.” A former key partner.

Former Telford MP, Lucy Allan told the Telegraph,

“The people in power believed that being honest about what had happened to the girls would fuel racial tensions. They pushed a narrative that hiding the problem was in the interests of the community, that looking the other way would cement social cohesion and protect society.”

Accusations of racism and Islamophobia produced a powerful chilling effect on this national scandal. The Home Secretary has reiterated, in her initial statement, that “It is never an excuse to use race and ethnicity or community relations as an excuse not to investigate and punish sex offenders.” But why are politicians and pundits still so reluctant to link the rape gangs to Islam?

Even centre-right commentators have tried to deny Islam as a compounding factor in these crimes. Tim Stanley wrote in The Telegraph that “Islam is not to blame for the grooming gangs”. He is open that anxieties about “find[ing] myself defending a small island of cosmopolitan conservatism” drove him to declare such a thing.

“[Britain] is a country so divided, so lacking a healthy middle ground of cultural exchange, that we can live within inches of each other yet remain as strangers. Let’s not open that gulf further by ostracising good Muslims.”

Stanley said that revoking the citizenship of ISIS bride Shamima Begum “is deeply troubling. Blood and soil stuff. Not very British.” (Someone should remind him that exile was a common punishment from the Anglo-Saxon era, through to Victorian prison colonies in Australia.) He also referenced the Gisèle Pelicot case — in which her husband Dominique and 49 other men were imprisoned for drugging and raping her over the course of a decade — to say

“The sordid truth is that it is a human problem, that sexual assault has occurred at all times in all places. Emphasising Islamic theology removes a little agency from the rapists – as if they had been brainwashed – and distracts from the fallen state of man, his moral vulnerability.”

So did Yasmin Qureshi, a Pakistani Labour MP, to argue it proved sexual violence is “not specific to any gender, race or religion”. Qureshi consistently insists on distracting from the role of ethnicity and religion in the rape gangs. When Conservative MP Kris Hopkins said, “Time and time again it’s a white girl being raped by Muslim men,” in Parliament in 2013, Qureshi insisted the ethnicity of offenders was “coincidental not deliberate,” and that the perpetrators being “nearly all men” was more important.

But the difference between Britain’s rape gang scandal and Pelicot’s ordeal is that there was no systemic cover-up of Pelicots case, due to sensitivities around the perpetrators’ race. Furthermore, just because sexual violence is a constant across civilisations, it is not committed at the same rate, or for the same reasons. This specific type of group-based child sexual exploitation happened for religious and racially-aggravated reasons. We know from the statements of perpetrators, testimony of victims, warnings by whistleblowers, and behaviour of the broader Muslim community, that Islam inspired the abuse visited upon these children.

There are an abundance of verses in Islamic scripture which psychopaths might cite to justify their predation on non-Muslim children. Indeed, the perpetrators recited verses from the Qur’an as they tortured the girls, deriving justification from their faith for their crimes. Women are subordinate to men: their testimony worth only half that of a man’s, and the punishment (Hudood) for sexual impropriety either a hundred lashes or death by stoning. Calls to violence against infidels can be found in the Qur’an and Hadiths, and through Muhammad’s declaration of war upon those who refused to submit to Allah in Medina. Mohammed himself took sex-slaves as the spoils of conquest; and Muslims are permitted to exploit them without ‘chastity’ in Surah Al-Mu’minun 23:5-6, Surah 33:50, and Surah 70:29-31.

Even if it is argued these are misreadings and contortions, there are a number of imams and Muslim influencers preaching this message. Mohammed Hijab has said “Paedophillia is very relative,” and argued that marital sexual relations with a thirteen-year-old girl is acceptable if she has “huge hips… huge breasts”.

He might look to Surah 65:4-5 to justify this, which sets forth protocol on marrying girls before they begin menstruation; or the Prophet’s marriage to Aisha, aged six, and consummation of said marriage when she reached nine. Hence why some girls were married to their rapists in traditional Islamic ceremonies. At one in Bradford, the girl’s social worker attended.

Dr Taj Hargey, imam of the Oxford Islamic Congregation and head of the Oxford Institute for British Islam, has long warned of Muslim men being taught to think it is acceptable to abuse English children. In 2013, Hargey wrote that the crimes of the Oxford gang were “bound up with religion and race”, and “deliberately targeted vulnerable white girls, whom they appeared to regard as ‘easy meat’, to use one of their revealing, racist phrases.” (These Oxford rapists will be released this year, having served their 12-year sentences — just as their crimes gain global attention.)

In mosques and madrassas, Hargey warns, men are taught that women are “second-class citizens, little more than chattels or possessions over whom they have absolute authority”. 

“The view of some Islamic preachers towards white women can be appalling. They encourage their followers to believe that these women are habitually promiscuous, decadent, and sleazy — sins which are made all the worse by the fact that they are kaffirs or non-believers.

“Their dress code, from miniskirts to sleeveless tops, is deemed to reflect their impure and immoral outlook. According to this mentality, these white women deserve to be punished for their behaviour by being exploited and degraded.”’

To ignore the connection between the rape gangs and Islam is “ideological denial”, according to Hargey.

“But then part of the reason this scandal happened at all is precisely because of such politically correct thinking. All the agencies of the state, including the police, the social services and the care system, seemed eager to ignore the sickening exploitation that was happening before their eyes.

“Terrified of accusations of racism, desperate not to undermine the official creed of cultural diversity, they took no action against obvious abuse.”

In an interview this month, Hargey explained how Muslim men are taught that “Muslim rapists would go to heaven before a Christian person.” 

“Every Friday when the congregational prayers end, up and down the country the imam says we should condemn the disbelievers and the non-believers and all those who are not Muslim, and only Muslims are going to heaven.

“So when you have that idea of superiority, of supremacy, of segregationist mentality, then yes, these people then go out and then do bad things to these young, vulnerable teenage girls who most of them are in care, they abused them and used them as chewing gum.”

It is worth noting that, after October 7th and the Southport massacre, both Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak’s governments pledged additional emergency funding to Britain’s mosques. The UK government is indiscriminately funding the indoctrination centres which produce these rape gangs.

This belief that outside the Ummah are unworthy of equal moral consideration is why many of the perpetrators remain remorseless. Some even regard the rapes as a form of Jihad: with one gang convicted in Rotherham in 2017 shouting “Allahu akbar” as they were lead out of court.

On this basis, Hargey insists:

“The criminality is fuelled by the ideology of the Islamic fundamentalism which has no basis in the Qu’ran.

Why is virtually every single person in these grooming gangs Muslim? It seems like 95 per cent of them are. We need to look at the interconnection between Islam, promoted by the clergy and the establishment in the UK … Unless we do address the toxic theology coming from the mosque and from the elders of the Muslim community, nothing much will change.”

A few other imams have tried to speak out against this Islamist indoctrination, but faced opposition. In 2013, Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, who joined Together Against Grooming, told the BBC: “People were troubled by us reading the sermon and one man asked me how he could stop it being read.”