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‎"Asian gangs, schoolgirls and a sinister taboo" read the Daily Mail headline in November 2010, ‎‎"Muslim gang jailed for kidnapping and raping two girls as part of their Eid celebrations" states ‎another of its salacious headlines in April this year, while the typically more demure Telegraph ran ‎with "Asian grooming gangs, the uncomfortable issue".
These headlines all refer to recent cases ‎involving sexually predatory gangs, the most recent of which, is the case of a group of men in Rochdale ‎found guilty of sexually abusing 47 vulnerable girls. The case has caused controversy as some ‎pundits claim the police failed to prosecute the men through fear they'd be branded racist. Former ‎MP Ann Cryer believes such fears meant that both the police and social services failed to act to ‎protect the girls and Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation urged the ‎police and the councils "not to be frightened to address this issue, there is a strong lesson that you ‎cannot ignore race or be over sensitive."‎
The case has thrust the issue of race back into the spotlight just as the MET is being investigated for ‎mounting complaints about racism and as increasingly strident voices claim political correctness is ‎impeding an assessment of the role race plays in such crimes. Columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown ‎suggests as much as she writes she's been "warned not to write" about such cases, for fear of ‎encouraging racism. "The rapists are all probably in one sense 'good' Muslims, praying and fasting ‎in the daytime, then prowling and preying at night", she lambasted, ignoring as one commentator ‎pointed out that "the defendants in question are at most nominally Muslim". Practising Muslims ‎certainly aren't supposed to rape children.‎
Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee Keith Vaz claims that the issue has nothing to do with ‎race or being Asian. He cautioned of the dangers in singling out the Asian community and has advised ‎caution in using race-related terminology. ‎
The focus on isolating race as an explanatory variable in cases of sex-grooming ignores all other ‎factors and essentialises the identity of the culprits - it ignores why Asian men are over-‎represented in socio-economically poorer areas where street-grooming occurs and why white girls ‎are over-represented among vulnerable groups in such areas.‎
What's more, plenty of sex-gangs are not Asian. Crime researchers Ella Cockbain and Helen Brayley ‎warned: "If on-street grooming continues to be reduced to the big Asian networks alone, a whole ‎host of other offenders will get overlooked."
The sex slave trade in this country is sadly alive and ‎well and is not primarily Asian driven, and paedophiles are not overwhelmingly of Asian ethnic ‎backgrounds, suggesting any abhorrent link some may seek to make between race and inherent ‎sexually predatory behaviour is not born out by the facts.
Such a link is also reminiscent of racist ‎terminology used to refer to black gangs in the 1980s, particularly Jack Straw's comment in January ‎last year relating to a separate case in Derby: "These young men are in a western society, in any ‎event, they act like any other young men, they're fizzing and popping with testosterone, they ‎want some outlet for that..." His comment both singled the men out as 'foreign' by referring to ‎them as "in a western society", rather than products of a society they were born and raised in, and ‎reduced their behaviour to physically urges, completely ignoring the dimension of power inherent ‎to rape, which is primarily a crime of violence, not sex. ‎
Some have referred to culturally specific terminology in order to claim that the view of some ‎women as worthless and thus open to abuse is restricted to certain communities. This ignores ‎power inequities based on gender manifest at every level of society and expressed through ‎different social and cultural idioms. Different terminology expresses a shared disdain for women, ‎inflected with culturally specific justifications: "sluts" "hoes" "gora" "skank" "cheap" "easy" - ‎sexism is not an 'Asian' issue, though it does of course affect Asians as it does everyone else - it is ‎sadly omnipresent, cross-culturally.‎
Those seeking to locate these crimes within some inherent Asian characteristic need to explain the ‎vast majority of law abiding Asian men, the diversity of Asian cultures, not culture and the fact the ‎Chief prosecutor who re-opened the case is himself an Asian Muslim, Nazir Afzal.‎
The treatment of this case is not about political correctness, it is about not stigmatising an entire ‎community based on a mis-identification of the explanatory variable in the crimes of this group of ‎men, who happen to be Asian.
Both the police and the judge appear to believe the race of the ‎victims and abusers was "coincidental", so the real question is why as a society, we are seeking to ‎attribute a racial dimension to it and what that says about our unspoken racist assumptions ‎concerning Asian men.
Academic Vron Ware recounts that the black male has been historically ‎constructed as the antithesis of white femininity, sexually predatory upon white innocence and ‎beauty - we'd be naive not to notice the same rhetoric being played out now with Asian/Muslim ‎males...‎
Follow Myriam Francois-Cerrah on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MFrancoisCerrah
Hayley Meachin: Why Do We Only Take Notice of Our Teenagers When Rapists Are Convicted?
Im sure the community in question would never advocate the punishment be carried out though, for say the writing of a book by a former adherent to the faith.
The Muslim community is out of step with the west in terms of equality, whenever something abhorrent emanates from within there is guaranteed to be a deafening silence. The few who dare to raise their heads are shouted down or threatened.
White men have a problem with drink and violence.
Black men have a problem with gun crime.
Muslim men have a problem with sex and women.
There i have said it, if the community denies the problem and blames the victims (women) it will never get solved and integration will be a long painful journey.
Yes the media does make its point with bold headlines, but that does not make it a lie. It is simply stating a fact. That is may be a Western distinction that other cultures need to appreciate too! What it does not do is change the facts. The complaint of Asians and in this case Muslims is that they will all be tarred with the same brush. That happens alot in the West look at our politicians, some are decent people who actually do want to do some good for the community and then you get Cameron and Clegg.
I'm not so sure about the sailor bit but, lets be honest here, most slaves were sold to traders by black men. Its a myth that the traders went out in hunting parties, they just brought the criminals, undesirables and war prisnors from tribal leaders.
You can't argue that this group was Pakistani Muslim or that this closeness of community may have ensured that they remained undetected for a considerable time and effected the Police decision not to innitiate enquiries when a complaint was raised four years ago. These offenders hid behind their community, race and colour, then claimed the court was racist when convicted. The girls were all white. They took no responsibility for their actions.
.
Did you as the writer of this article, voice your concern when it was inferred that white people were racist following the brutal murder of Stephen Lawrence by a gang of white racist thugs? Did you caution against stigmatising the white communtity and Police?
I don't think the majority of people see Asian men as any more likely to to commit rape or be involved in sex crime than any other group. What people are questioning more than anything is why race is pertinent when applied to white offenders but totally irrelevant when black/Asian offenders are involved. You can not be selective.
Can you imagine this headline? no.
But can you imagine the fallout, yep.
We need help in this country, really.
Regards.
I think now is the time to say, hey its not working.
Academics dont know a hot tap from a cold one without the H and the C, even when the hand burns.
Well now is the time for many burnt hands and hot necks.
How the Queen can sit there and let this happen is beyond me, head of state, my pink button.
If an asian raped Beatrice, say for example, I am sure something more would be done.
Nobody should claim that all Pakistani men are involved in the sex trade, when that is patently untrue. Nobody can claim all Asian men are involved, nor all Muslims. What is an absolute is that, again, in THIS case, a group of Pakistani Muslim men of Asian descent (geographically speaking Pakistan is in South Asia) preyed exclusively on young, vulnerable white girls. These attacks involved one ethnic group targeting another, to say that racism was not involved simply makes people angry as you are attempting the impossible, to whit, to deny something that is obviously true.
As mentioned in other comments on here, when Stephen Lawrence was attacked, that was racially motivated. It was one ethnic group attacking someone because they were from another. When the Japanese worked their Chinese prisoners to death, that was one ethnic group attacking another. When Serbs and Albanian's fought in Kosovo, that was two ethnic groups fighting each other. In every one of these cases the ethnic aspects of the problem were clear, just as it is in this case.
Please stop trying to tell us otherwise, admit this is the truth and accept that sometimes, people from one ethnic group target others simply because they are from a different ethnicity.
This is true.‎
Hindus and Sikhs, Indians and Bangladeshis should not be included by using this loose, umbrella term.
Why are these other groups included when they have little in common (concerning their religion and/or nationality) other than a similar ethnic appearance?
Is this usage caused by laziness or a desire to avoid keep repeatedly saying Muslim and/or Pakistani?
Do something about it if it bothers you.
Talk to the brotherhood and it might transpire into your fellows.
Pathetic that you actually have to remind your fellow religionist that this is not normal behaviour, at least certainly not in the civilised world that these animals clearly are not part of.