EU Referendum


Rotherham: an obsession with Islam


10/02/2015



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Melanie Phillips has been in The Times complaining about the failure to acknowledge that the cultural factor behind the Rotherham grooming gangs is not that they are Pakistani but Muslim.

Harking on about "persistent, almost pathological denial", she asserts that: "It's not Pakistani Christians, Hindus or atheists who are involved in these crimes. Nor is it just white girls who are targeted: Sikhs have been complaining for years that their girls are attacked by Muslim men".

We must, therefore, she opines, "say the unsayable about Rotherham", her analysis extending to the view that the abuse happened because, "in Muslim society women are treated as inferior people, and non-Muslims are widely regarded as trash".

Personally, I find this superficiality offensive – it is an affront to the art of analysis and an insult to the intelligence of her readers. At least as important a factor in motivating these men were the tribal mores, and specifically the influence of the tribal background, about which I have written in detail.

Apart from my own writing, more recently I linked to a piece in the Independent from 2012, in which Alyas Karmani, a Bradford psychologist, is cited. The piece thus tells us:
"Many British Pakistani men live in two worlds," he begins. "The first is encompassed by family, business, mosque. It is a socially conservative culture where there is no toleration of sex outside of marriage, and little emphasis on sexual gratification".

Many are emotionally browbeaten into preserving their family honour by marrying a cousin from their family's village in north-west Kashmir, the part of Pakistan from which the forefathers of Bradford's Asian community originally migrated.

These new wives can bring with them "an unhealthy attitude towards sex and sexuality". It is not Islam which induces that, he says, but a traditional rural Kashmiri culture.

"The second world in which British Pakistani men live," he continues, "is the over-sexualised, material and lust-driven English lifestyle, where women are scantily clad, binge-drinking is a mainstream form of entertainment and porn is a massive factor." You might have thought that, as time passed, British Asians would have found middle ground between these two worlds.

But that has not been happening. "Patriarchs and matriarchs within families have huge influence," says the imam. "Conservatism is maintaining its grip. Around 60 to 70 percent of British Asians, men and women, are still virgins when they marry",

For those Asians who work at night –such as taxi-drivers and takeaway workers – these two worlds collide dramatically in their workplaces which are filled with young women from a culture in which drinking to insensibility is commonplace.

"Many of these men do not understand what is appropriate behaviour in wider society and what is not," he adds. "They are so lacking in social skills – because relationships between men and women in Pakistani culture are characterised by a real formality – that they can misconstrue an ordinary conversation with a white girl in their taxi and think she is indicating that she is open to a sexual advance when that is not what she means at all".

Others cannot resist the temptation aroused by women – and young girls – whose cultural assumptions are so alien from their own.
Also in the piece, Adil Ray, a DJ and comedian with the BBC Asian network, is cited. He sets out a hypothesis that points specifically to the Kashmiri culture, asking whether there was something particular about it that nurtured abusive attitudes.

But, if there are tribal influences, they are disputed. Alyas Karmani says: "It's not about education. It's about access and opportunity". These men "are not targeting white girls specifically but going for those who are most easily accessible and vulnerable, and that is by definition mainly white girls as young Asian teenagers are within the protection of the home at that time of night".

"The issues around ethnicity and sexuality are complex," he continues. "Some powerful gangsta types have white girlfriends as status symbols. They would not dream of sharing them with anyone".

"But other 'big men' think it adds to their status and kudos if they pass their conquests around to their 'brothers' under biradiri – the system of clan (i.e., tribal) loyalty which has been brought here from Kashmir. That is often the case with those who abuse young girls. They involve brothers or cousins or friends from their clan".

That observation, we are told, is confirmed by academic researchers working on child sex exploitation. Analysis by Ella Cockbain and Helen Brayley at University College, London's Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science shows that abusers' networks were "tightly knit and characterised by strong social bonds predating the abuse, such as kinship".

"Gangs did not develop around a shared furtive interest in child sex abuse. Rather, abuse was introduced into pre-existing social networks".

This piece, now three years old, is one of the better analyses I have seen, and it does give some insight into why grooming gangs exist in the Asian communities. By comparison with this, the commentary from Melanie Phillips is trite. But it is also fundamentally dishonest. In arguing her "Muslim thesis", she calls in aid Australia, where gang rapes in Sydney in 2000 were committed by Lebanese (i.e., Muslim) Australians.

What she, the Jewess from a Jewish immigrant family, fails to point out is that, currently in Australia, there is a Royal Commission investigating child abuse, which is now looking at the orthodox Jewish community and the appalling treatment of young children and the attempts to cover it up, using rabbinical law as a cover.

As Compleat Bastard points out, We're looking at criminal exploitation of children by men in alien subcultures, existing beyond the reach of authorities who lack informants and intelligence - and exploit a lucrative opportunity.

What then happened in Rotherham is the same old, same old culture of denial, which so typifies public service in the country, from Donnygate to Mid-Staffs NHS trust and Baby P, which has nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with lack of accountability.

For sure, there are many aspects of Islam – and the political exploitation of the religion – which are offensive and difficult to deal with, but this block, leaden obsession with it, and the tendency of some – like Melanie Phillips – to blame all ills upon it, is intellectually lazy and not at all helpful.

When, among the Ukipites, it replaces sentient thought, it becomes positively harmful, especially when it comes from the mouth of Farage, who sounds more like Nick Griffin with every passing day.

We owe it to ourselves to explore our own society – good and bad – and to understand what is happening, in order better to hold to account these responsible for the failings. This blind, ignorant obsession with one part of a complex interaction of multiple factors simply does more harm than good.