The majority of sexual offenders are white men – there is no Muslim problem with sexual grooming

Metro is a free paper distributed on public transport; I have been told that there is no print edition in London at the moment. As one commentator to this disgraceful ‘article’ says, “Metro is a paper only fit to line a cat litter tray hence why it’s free because no normal sane person would actually pay money for it” 

An opinion by rape jihad apologist Faima Bakar “lifestyle reporter” 

Our series The State of Racism has been running over the past six weeks to illuminate just how prevalent racism is in the UK. 

…every time I have written about Muslims, I have received one recurring comment, on my Facebook, Twitter, emails and in the article comments – ‘what about the grooming gangs?’. Why is this bought up every time I mention an obstacle faced by Muslims? Do the crimes of a few speak for all Muslims? Obviously not, but it seems this constant bleating about ‘Muslim grooming gangs’ is specifically being used to shut down important discussions about islamophobia.

And while it’s difficult to measure the ethnicity of sexual offenders, there is clear evidence in many reports that the majority have been white men, not Asian Muslims.

To say it’s an intrinsically Muslim problem is a lazy, transparent tactic – and the inaccuracies behind these claims need to be dismantled in order to move the conversation on. Grooming gangs are only depicted to be an Asian or ‘Muslim’ problem because of a few high-profile cases and the media’s penchant to overreport certain types of stories. The reasons people seem to be so consistently hung up on this issue is twofold; first because it reinforces already-held racist stereotypes of Muslim men as threatening and regressive.

And secondly, because the most oft-cited cases of sexual grooming involve white, (writers italics) working-class girls and women. . . In the sexual exploitation cases of Rochdale and Rotherham in Yorskhire, (sic) there was extraordinary neglect against the, mostly white, victims aged 12-16.

There are actually Muslim victims of sexual exploitation but they’re often missed because of the focus on white victims. We can also ask: if the perpetrators were also white – would their race be mentioned? 

The fact that whiteness so often goes unchecked and becomes an invisible default is one of the reasons we launched The State of Racism.

We see the same thing happen in cases of terrorism where attacks by Muslims receive 357 per cent more press attention then when white people do it.

These grooming gang cases are complex and there are racial elements to it – the perpetrators saw the girls as ‘easy meat’ because they were white and thought to be sexually loose. This is, unquestionably, appalling and discriminatory behaviour from these Asian men.

The way we see it, the men denounce themselves from Islam the moment they commit grotesque crimes. So when they do commit them, they’re doing it as bad and dangerous men. Not as Muslim men. These gangs deserve all our condemnation for the crimes they commit, but let’s not frame this as an intrinsically Muslim problem.

The comments do not support her. 

• This is shameful reporting. You have based the entire article on a report from one year (2011), most likely the year you could find with the least cases of grooming committed by Asian men. A quick Google will suffice to show you the MANY grooming gangs that have since been uncovered and sentenced, and goodness knows more are still to be found. Asian grooming gangs are not the only problem of course, but they are a major problem, and to deny their impact and their cause is insulting to the victims.
• Ah, a Muslim defending Muslims. This can’t be biased at all can it. Let’s see now…. Rotherham, 19 men and 2 women jailed Huddersfield, 34 men convicted Bradford, 9 men charged Rochdale, another 9 men! we could go on and on and on couldn’t we, but we don’t have a Muslim grooming gang problem
• Typical of this racist author to try and deny that one specific ethnic group that targeted another ethnic group is not racist. Is it because the perpetrators of these crimes are the so called minority and the victims the typical white privileged kind. Shame on Metro for supporting this vile woman and allowing her to belittle the victims of these crimes and find an excuse for the perpetrators.
• If somebody you knew told you they had a child to abuse you would ring the police. These men all chose to take part and invite others to get involved. Oh and they tried to turn the girls into alcoholic drug addicts
• There is a problem with Asian men grooming predominantly young white girls. There is no problem with Islamophobia. We detest this disgusting, archaic religion. So called Islamophobia is not a social issue. It is a logical reaction to a malign religious cult called Islam.
• The problem here is that in some cases 20 men who all worked together as takeaway workers/taxi drivers were working together to systematically drug, abuse, beat and pimp young girls to other takeaway workers/taxi drivers in their or other communities. Grown men, turning little girls into drug addicts so they could be abused by their friends, colleagues, family members up and down the country. The police and authorities were happy to turn a blind eye.