Mick Hartley

There's a notable silence on the grooming gangs scandal from Britain's muslims – and this is, despite the endless prattle about ethnicity, a story about Islamic culture. [In fact the concentration on ethnicity has perhaps made it easier for the whole business to be dismissed, as has happened so often, as a racist right-wing scare story.] These predatory men who form the overwhelming majority of the offenders don't just happen to be ethnically Pakistani: they are, more significantly, muslim. There's a straight line from the niqab, and the requirement for muslim women to cover themselves in public, to the horror stories coming from Rotherham and Rochdale and Bradford. In Islamic culture it's a woman's responsibility to guard against their sexual exploitation: men can't be expected to restrain themselves when confronted with displays of naked female flesh. These young white girls are asking for it.

Islamic culture, from the Taliban to Iran to Saudi Arabia, is drenched in misogyny. I have no view on whether it's built in to the religion or it's something that's happened over the centuries – but there it is, an undeniable fact. The hope, largely unexpressed, was that over time British muslims would adapt to the mainstream culture, but progress is slow. It'd be interesting perhaps to see how many of the offenders are first or second or third generation immigrants, but matters aren't helped by the tendency of muslim communities to isolate themselves from mainstream UK culture – nor by the preference for cousin marriages.

But yes, there's not much condemnation of the rape gangs, that I've heard, from muslim leaders. So this is at least a start, from Fiyaz Mughal, of Faith Matters and Tell MAMA, in the Telegraph:

We can’t get away, nor can anyone miss, the glaringly obvious point that Casey repeatedly mentions in her report: that there is an over-representation of Asian men of Pakistani heritage amongst the men who abused and raped vulnerable white girls.

This didn’t come out of a vacuum. Sermons in British mosques around child safeguarding, the promotion of equality for women and girls, and the need to tackle misogyny could possibly have changed things if they existed some two decades ago. Yet, even to this day, these matters are not discussed by many imams and religious leaders in the UK.

Having worked for over two decades in British Muslim communities, I am aware of the problem of misogyny within them. Many Muslim women are trying to challenge patriarchy but are constantly lectured on their dress sense through the association of piety with “covering up”. The responsibility in Islam, (and I speak as a Muslim), seems to lie wholly on the shoulders of women around their bodies. This needs to change; there are many historical instances in Islamic history of women leaders who have challenged men.

This is important because mosques have a key role in shaping and changing the behaviours of many Muslim men in the thirty five to sixty age bracket, where many of the child offenders sit within. After Casey’s report, there is an added impetus for imams and mosque committees to make child safeguarding and women’s rights front and centre in their sermons. For too long I have heard them talk about foreign affairs or discuss issues of no real relevance to the lives of Muslim men and women in Britain. Casey’s report is a stark wake up call for things to change.

Muslim leaders need to stand with the women who had their lives shattered when they were girls by Asian men of Pakistani heritage. These men lived split lives, some acting as if they were holier than holy, yet their actions demonstrated that they were monsters who could not spare an ounce of empathy for vulnerable children. Such actions happen because religious, political and social leadership in British Muslim communities have failed to speak up to protect the weakest in our society.

It's not earth-shattering, but it's a rare and welcome acknowledgement of the problem from a British muslim.