MBE for man who led Muslim police boycott after grooming scandal
A man who led a Muslim community boycott of South Yorkshire police after the Rotherham grooming scandal has 
been awarded an MBE for “services to integration” and “cohesion”.
Muhbeen Hussain called on Muslims to sever ties with the force and “take all the necessary action to protect ourselves” in October 2015, the year after the force’s failure to investigate thousands of allegations of abuse and rape had been exposed.
His campaign group warned: “Any Muslim groups or institutions in Rotherham that do not adhere to this policy of disengagement will also be boycotted by the Muslim community.”
Asked what motivated him, he told the BBC it was “first and foremost” the police’s “pernicious lie’ that it had failed to act on grooming allegations “because of fears of being called racist”. He argued that this amounted to an attempt to “scapegoat” Muslims.
Hussain also said police had failed to protect the community from the far right.
Hussain has repeatedly defended the boycott in the years since. In 2017, the leader of Rotherham council refused to meet him on the grounds of his “divisive recklessness”. He responded by writing a public letter questioning the leader’s fitness for office and claiming his position brought the local authority into disrepute.
Today, he runs the all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims and holds a House of Commons pass sponsored by Naz Shah, the Bradford West MP. (Those abused girls in Rotherham and elsewhere just need to shut their mouths. For the good of diversity. – she didn’t say it, but she or someone on her team DID retweet it.)
Hussain later received his MBE for “political services to integration cohesion and to British society” was announced in the King’s birthday honours list last month.
It is unknown who nominated him for the award, which accepts applications from the public before being vetted by a committee supported by civil servants in the Cabinet Office.
A senior fellow at the Policy Exchange think tank, Sir John Jenkins, said: “Hussain’s pending award of the MBE brings the system into discredit. The Government should review the system of due diligence applied to those being awarded honours to understand how Mr Hussain’s prior activity in boycotting the police was overlooked and to implement steps to avoid such awards in future.”
Hussain defended his actions, telling the Rotherham Advertiser: “It wasn’t a publicity stunt, but we want people to listen. Like any trade union would call a strike, we had to have this boycott.”
On Saturday night he said in a statement: “. . . I have a distinguished track record in building bridges for communities and I was delighted and honoured to be offered an MBE in the forthcoming King’s birthday honours in recognition of this work . . .”