The final report of MP Rupert Lowe’s independent inquiry into grooming gangs makes for harrowing reading exposing, as it does, organised child exploitation and grooming in the UK going back to the 1950s.
It would appear, in fact, that the exposure of grooming gangs in places such as Rotherham, Telford, and Oxford is the tip of a very large, albeit what up to now has been hidden, iceberg.
It is now clear, despite the low number of convictions, that the overwhelming majority of perpetrators are Muslim men of Pakistani heritage, although smaller groups from Somali, Iranian, Syrian, Turkish, and other Muslim origins have also been implicated. Only 7% of offenders were white, and 8% black. Non-Muslim participants, states the report baldly, are the exception.
In a statement made in the House of Lords in 2019, Lord Pearson of Rannoch said that, based on evidence contained in the Jay Report into sexual exploitation in Rotherham, combined with similar reports in Telford and Oxford, there were as many as “250,000 victims of radical Muslim grooming gangs, which in itself is probably an underestimate”. This shocking figure, the Lowe Inquiry agrees, is likely to be higher.
How have we got to this place? Lowe’s inquiry gives a detailed analysis. In an attempt to create unified citizenship for the UK and its colonies, it describes how the British Nationality Act 1948 for the first time granted millions of colonial and Commonwealth citizens rights of entry into the UK – which they appear (perhaps unsurprisingly) to have taken up with enthusiasm, giving rise to an unprecedented surge in migration. This, says the report, began the transformation of British society, exponentially boosted by the Blair government of 1997, which encouraged migration for economic and political gain, but did nothing to address the looming and perhaps inevitable clash of cultures.
Not only did the UK find itself having to accommodate different religions and ethnicities, but it also found itself playing host to an incompatible culture in which victims were regarded as “white trash” or “kuffar” who deserved punishment.
As the report explains:
“The demographic and cultural drivers are clear. Perpetrators from Pakistani Muslim and other Muslim backgrounds operated under an honour- and shame-based clan code that treated non-Muslim girls, especially white working class girls, as property available for sexual use.
“This pattern was reinforced by eight theological and legal aspects of Islam. These include the doctrine of Muslim superiority drawn from Quranic verses that position Muslims at the top with a duty to correct non-believers.
"The gang members’ justification for their crimes can be found in the Islamic principles of loyalty and disavowal known as al-walā' wa-l-barā'. It demands enmity towards non-Muslims, the superiority of men over women, forced marriage combined with the absence of any fixed minimum age of consent, the perception of female sexuality as inherently dangerous, a system of sex slavery that authorises sexual relations with non-Muslim captives, and a religiously sanctioned social hierarchy that subjugates conquered non-Muslims.
“These elements, filtered through clannish immigrant sub-cultures, provided religious justification that enabled the systematic rape and even slaughter of White British girls.”
Using direct testimony from survivors of the grooming gangs, the report describes in detail how vulnerable young white girls were targeted and groomed, before being ruthlessly trafficked for sex to streams of men, who abused and tortured them one after another as they lay drugged and bleeding, often too terrified to protest. Many were also held captive and, when not providing sex, found themselves used as slaves, cooking and cleaning – forbidden to look their male captors in the eye.
The scale of the crimes is almost unbelievable, and the report gives insight into the mindset of the perpetrators based, according to the report, on Quranic teaching and belief.
As the report states, "The evidence from grooming gang convictions across Britain repeatedly shows a Muslim background among many of the perpetrators.
"When this is viewed alongside similar patterns of sex crimes observed both in countries of origin for immigrants and in Muslim-majority societies, it offers compelling grounds to consider that elements of Islam are contributing to the grooming gang scourge in our country.
"While it is unsurprising that a religion can shape and regulate sexual behaviour, the suggestion that Islam might play a role in driving sex crimes remains deeply uncomfortable for some in the liberal West.
"Even so, the possibility of an Islamic influence on these crimes cannot be dismissed. The available data strongly points toward it as a hypothesis that merits serious examination."
The findings are both chilling and frightening, revealing an utter contempt, not just for the girls, but for Christian belief and white culture as a whole.
As detailed in the report, the Quran teaches that Islam is superior to all other religions (e.g. Sura 48:28), and believers of other religions – including people of the book who don’t accept Muhammad as Allah’s supreme prophet – are ‘unclean’ (najis). It follows from this that Muslims are called to love and support fellow-believers, at whatever cost, but to keep all non-Muslims at a distance, ‘harbouring enmity against them’ (Sura 60:4).
The report cites Andrew Norfolk, one of the first journalists to expose Britain’s rape gang scandal, in stating that “although Islam prohibits sex outside marriage, all four schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach that a girl can be married when she reaches puberty, which on average in Britain is 11.” According to Muslim Hadiths, Muhammad married Aisha when she was six and consummated the marriage when she was nine. Many of the gang survivors say that they were around eleven, or very young teenagers, when the abuse started.
But perhaps most shocking of all is the report’s findings on the abject failure of the authorities, including the police, schools, social services, and NHS, to offer any kind of help, protection, or support to the victims. Time and again the girls say that they reported the abuse – for example, to the police or a case worker – only to find themselves ignored, or even blamed and taken back to their abusers. Sometimes they describe finding themselves talking to a Muslim case worker or police officer, who actively discouraged them from pursuing their complaint, all too often implying that what had happened was their own fault.
In multi-cultural, diverse and inclusive Britain, the clear message is that the UK, as a society, is running scared of being branded racist. Where ethnicity and religious belief are involved – provided only that belief isn’t Christian – justice apparently turns a blind eye to any and all wrong, so afraid have we become of being branded bigoted and racist.
"A combination of the paralysing fear of ‘racism’ accusations and the scramble for votes from imported foreign sub-cultures meant that pure evil was allowed to metastasise," the report reads.
As it also explains, the UK is currently dār al-ḥarb (“the house of war”), being a territory under non-Muslim control. The Quran teaches that all who fail to acknowledge Allah as the one and only god – i.e. all non-Muslims – are infidels, who can/must lawfully be fought, defeated and enslaved. This would appear to be a driving force behind the grooming gangs, with evidence given of victims routinely described by the perpetrators as ‘white slags’, ‘white trash’, ‘kuffar bitches’, or worse, accompanied by shouts of Allahu Akbar, and boasts of racial supremacy.
To our shame, this all too apparent racial hostility has been resolutely ignored and suppressed by state actors and politicians alike, even though the abuses have been known about for years – for fear, we are told, of stirring up racial tension … and losing votes. And the Labour party, heavily reliant on the Muslim vote, is particularly condemned for suppressing criticism of Islam.
Overall, the inquiry finds that the UK is a racially and religiously divided society, with Islam not just refusing to integrate, but aggressively seeking to take over and impose control – while the authorities, ever fearful of being branded Islamophobic racists, often seem actively to collude in what appears an orchestrated campaign. This is not good enough. The electoral dependence of politicians on the Pakistani-Muslim vote must end, and we must acknowledge, without fear or favour, ethnic and religious patterns behind criminal acts of abuse, and take robust action to stop them.
Offenders should receive the maximum punishment for their crimes and, where appropriate, be deported. And Muslims who choose to settle in the UK must be required to respect and integrate with our culture – in particular, they must learn our language and abide by our values and cultural norms.
The conspiracy of silence that only adds to the damage done to young lives and which promulgates the illegitimate spread of Islamic power must end.
More from Lynda Rose:
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