‘It takes two to tango’: As 12 Asian men are jailed for 140 years for gang-raping a 13-year-old white girl, Muslim councillor admits some in community still think SHE was partly to blame

A Muslim councillor has admitted that some feel as though ‘it takes two to tango’ as 12 men were jailed for gang-raping a 13-year-old white girl in West Yorkshire. Councillor Zafar Ali said some in the community feel ‘she played her part’

The gang of men from Pakistani origin were jailed for a total of 140 years at Bradford Crown Court today, for 13 months of horrendous abuse of the British white girl in 2011 and 2012.

However, the Councillor for Keighley Central, where the abuse took place, has admitted that some members of the community felt ‘it takes two to tango’ and that the girl may have ‘played her part’.

Zafar Ali, who has been a member of the Keighley Mosque for decades believes that some of the men may have attended in the past, but said the Muslim community totally condemn their actions.

He told MailOnline: ‘Everyone now believes that justice has been done, we need to move forward and it is a lesson for the whole Muslim community. There are a few bad apples but this does not represent the Muslim community as a whole and any sensible Muslim totally condemns these actions.’ 

Eleven of the men were today jailed for rape and a twelfth man was jailed for sexual activity with a child under 16 today at Bradford Crown Court, but the ringleader has fled to Bangladesh. 

Left is Faisal Khan demonstrating the arrogance the Judge spoke of during sentencing making a gun gesture outside court during the course of the trial. Let us hope that 13 years imprisonment will ‘soften his cough’ as the old saying goes; but until the penitentiary system is reimposed I don’t hold out much hope.

Keighley MP Kris Hopkins said Asian men are still ‘getting away with it’ After the sentencing, Kris Hopkins, Conservative MP for Keighley spoke out against the ‘sick model of organised groups of Asian men grooming young white girls’, but said there are more women out there who need justice.

He said the sentenced were vindication for controversial comments he made during a parliamentary debate in 2012, claiming that organised groups of Asian men were ‘going around raping white girls’. However, he claims that even today he has been ‘lambasted’ for even mentioning that the men are Asian when talking about the sentences.

He told MailOnline: ‘There are sexual offenders who are white, but the fact is this particular model is all Asian men and all the victims were white. I was attacked in 2012 and today, when these men were convicted, the community was silent. You have to ask yourself why these men get away with this behaviour.

‘There is broader issues around the way women are treated in that community, there are hundreds if not thousands of women who live behind that door and have no voice.’

He warned that gangs of Asian men were at large in Keighley, raping white girls, in the debate which followed the Rotherham sexual abuse scandal. Questions were asked after it emerged that between 1997 and 2013, there were various reports of sexual exploitation at the hands of Asian men, but some were never made public or finalised.

However, Zafar Ali, who spent 21 years working for the government’s Racial Equality Council, said that it is unfair to ‘label the entire Muslim community’. At least he realises that these rapists are Muslim.