News:

A report commissioned by Rotherham Borough Council has revealed that at least 1,400 children were subjected to appalling sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.

Revealing details of the inquiry's findings, Professor Jay said, "It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered."

The inquiry team found examples of "children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone". It is also thought that many babies born to victims of the grooming and sexual exploitation in Rotherham were then taken away from their mothers, causing them further trauma.

A care worker, who worked at children's homes from 2003-2007, told the BBC, men would arrive almost "every night" to collect girls, who escaped using a range of methods and were then usually driven off in taxis.

According to the report, several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought as racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so. Many of the members of such grooming gangs were thought to be of Pakistani origin. As with the Rochdale case, the spotlight has now fallen on the supposed acceptability of Asian men to target British white girls. According to The Guardian, this is further evidence of "the extent to which the former Labour government tried to play down criminality and extremism among British Muslims for fear of undermining community cohesion".

Comment:

It is clear that the Western media and politicians are side tracking this issue and making it one of race rather than the abhorrent criminal act sexual abuse is, which occurs across all cultures and ethnicities. This provides no justice for the victims. Rather than examining the root causes of the serious and growing problem of sexual exploitation of women in Britain, the media has started to generalize the issue to ‘Muslims', ‘brown', ‘Pakistanis' and ‘Asians'. This sort of reporting and rhetoric from the government and media causes ethnic tensions; ignoring the core issue, which is that children, many of them in vulnerable situations, were terrorised and physically harmed by opportunistic men who were able to get away with their crimes for years.

As with the Rochdale gangs, Islam gets a special mention, despite the actions of these individuals being categorically against the Deen. Islam rejects and admonishes such behavior; however when British born Pakistani men are involved, their religious values are immediately highlighted. And yet the values and beliefs of their white counterparts are never mentioned and raised equally. After the Jimmy Saville Scandal, the high profile sexual abuse cases of Rolf Harris, William Roache and Dave Lee Travis, the rape culture at universities and the growing figures of child on child sexual abuse, it is clear such values are not exclusive to the British Asian community.

As to the claim that authorities deliberately ignored information on these crimes for fear of being politically incorrect, this is difficult to believe given the level of propaganda the media is happy to supply against the Muslim community wherever else they contradict "British values". Furthermore, it is widely accepted that the police and social services continually fall down when it comes to believing children who claim abuse, and struggle to deal with sexual offences across the board. It is known that some of the abused are characterized as in a "relationship" with their abusers, and thus the system struggles to tackle domestic offences.

These men picked the most vulnerable girls they had access to. Maybe white women were more accessible to them than Asian girls. However, this does not make this case a racially motivated crime. Rather, this is a story of unprincipled individuals getting away with sexual exploitation. These sorts of crimes are sadly common in the UK, perpetrated by men of all backgrounds, due to broken values which lead them to dabble in alcohol, drugs and the abuse of women.

These men are individuals that are part of society. This issue should be about the causes of widespread abuse of women and girls in society as a whole. The secular liberal values and system have failed these young innocent girls. These crimes are an extension of the values of freedom that people carry, freedom to gratify their own instincts and desires in whichever way they wish. Also these types of criminal activity, specifically gang association and drug selling are really a jigsaw of different problems and issues in society that enforce one another.

Islam and the Muslim community at large have nothing to apologize for when these crimes are committed. Rather we should see it as an opportunity to clarify the true media objective through the way in which it reports these stories, and highlight the underlying cause of such abuse.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by

Aisha Hasan