Once again the British Muslim community is being endangered by social media and statements by politicians based on misinformation and narratives designed to stir up division and hatred rather than shed light on complex social problems.
At the very start of this article let me call out the misinformation and false impression that it creates.
“Grooming Gangs” have become such a common concept that in very many people’s minds two things are true. Most of the sexual exploitation takes place in grooming gangs. In fact the opposite is true, in 2023 group based child sexual abuse accounted for 3.7% of all reported sexual offences. Of this number 26% took place in family, and 17% in grooming gangs. (BBC, 05.01.2025). I.e. 0.6% of all child sexual abuse was perpetrated by “gangs”. In order to properly assess and address a child’s vulnerability, it is vitally important we get this in perspective, while still remembering – any child so violated is a tragedy and totally wrong.
The second assumption made as a result of the past 20 years of politicking is that the gangs involved were predominantly Muslim and their victims, white girls. The argument very quickly moves to assume that this is “normal Muslim behaviour” and a product of their faith.
That line of argument has over the past decade become widened to argue against immigration on the grounds that any Muslim men admitted to the nation will be a public danger. It has thus become a major part of the growing Islamophobia in our nation. Again, this is misinformation and a distortion of the truth.
Elon Musk, owner of social media giant X, which in somewhat kinder days we called Twitter, and the world’s richest man has decided to draw considerable attention to the evils of the UK’s “grooming gangs” and especially the case against them made by former Lutonian Stephen Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson.
We argue that distorting the truth using racialised and racist rhetoric endangers many Muslims, in particular South Asian men and women, and does nothing to solve the problem of sexual exploitation they claim to target.
The problem is, neither Elon Musk or Nigel Farage have mentioned Muslims. That may be true, but the problem is that after two decades of attention to grooming gangs “every one knows” who’s responsible. Or better, think they know.
Let’s step back and look at the issue.
First, lets be clear: Grooming of young people for sexual exploitation by groups and gangs is a reality. There is no doubting that.
Equally, such grooming and the violation of young lives following it, is appalling, and to be totally condemned and opposed. There is no question.
And finally, any person, organisation, ideology or religion and official policy that promotes it or protects it should be held to account and condemned. Again, there is no question.
Summarising the problem, over the past week the question of “Grooming Gangs” and the legitimisation of a rape culture by those resistant to dealing with them, an issue that has become a significant part of British politics over the past two decades, has resurfaced in the social media statements of Elon Musk and Nigel Farage, and the response from Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch. So what is wrong with this? Only that the narratives of our politicians and on social media should be based on the facts, and be clear in their rejection of the popular myths that have surrounded this issue from the beginning.
Christians and Muslim community members in Luton came together in 2016 to address this. In short we saw each other’s horror at all that was happening, that we shared in our total condemnation of sexual exploitation of any young people, and that the true expression of our faith was to safeguard young people whoever they were. At the time, headlines were regularly projecting horrific accounts of abuse in Rotheram, Rochdale, Telford, Oxford and cities across Britain, but equally accounts of different patterns of abuse within the church were regularly in the news. We committed to walk together amidst the barrage of headlines that point to the horror what has been happening, and together to oppose all abuse, and so Faiths Against Child Sexual Exploitation, FACES, was born.
However we were committed from the first to not just speak from the theory of our faith but with the evidence from good research on child sexual abuse. One of our founding members made that a reality: Lucie Moore was at the time a member of a team of experts on abuse based at the University of Bedfordshire Luton campus. Lucie and her colleagues made sure our work was deeply engaged with the best research on sexual abuse, and especially what was going on in our towns and cities, and more widely in our society, and how it could be countered.
That research has consistently shown that the theme of “Muslim Grooming Gangs” has been deeply problematical. So Ella Cockbain and Waqas Tufail have written that these “have become a defining feature of media, political and public debate around child sexual exploitation in the UK.” They argue that “The dominant narrative that has emerged to explain a series of horrific cases is misleading, sensationalist and has itself promoted a number of harms” (Cockbain and Tufail, “Failing victims, fuelling hate: challenging the harms of the ‘Muslim grooming gangs’ narrative” January 2020).
Lucie along with my colleague and co-chair of FACES, Rehana Faisal, were thus cosignatories of a letter to the prime minister and government in May 2023 after a series of deeply troubling interventions by them on the issue of grooming gangs. They wrote to:
“challenge the damaging ‘myths and stereotypes’ noted by IICSA and the Westminster Government itself. To this end, we urgently ask all politicians to refrain from making partial, inaccurate or divisive claims about child sexual abuse. Doing so undermines attempts to ensure policy-making is evidence-based, fair and inclusive. Many recent political announcements and accompanying media discussions have clearly fallen short in this regard, perpetuating misinformation, racism and division. Whatever the intention, stereotyping around child sexual abuse (racial or otherwise) poses considerable risks, not least to children.”
We have had to face head on the challenges of far right narratives in Luton over the past 15 years since the emergence of the English Defence League and its then leader Stephen Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson. Islamophobia has become a very real thing significantly impacting our Muslim community, and its impact has been especially deep on young people.
For us as Christians it has been vital understand the real impact of that on our neighbours and fellow citizens. To challenge it means we must engage with the narratives that give the hatred power, and one of the most vicious of these has been around sexual abuse.
It is therefore ironic that some are now arguing that proposed definitions of islamophobia being considered by the Labour government will make it impossible to deal with the issue of the grooming gangs. We would contend that the opposite is true; a right understanding of the issues and a robust understanding of Islamophobia will enable us to build a more trusting unified society.
Afterword: In writing this piece our minds are drawn once again to our huge sadness and sense of loss as we together come to terms with the recent death of our dear colleague Lucie Moore. (Sad news of the passing of our colleague Dr Lucie Moore) Lucie’s contributions to research around the vulnerabilities of young people to abuse are recognised by her colleagues here, but also in conversation at her funeral. However we have often remarked as a team that what has made FACES so good is the depth of our conversations, and the result of that in the quality of the relations between us as people of different faiths. Lucie’s outliving of that will long remain with us, and is a testament to what can happen if instead of building walls of suspicion and hate between faiths we turn our energies to the challenges that face us as a multicultural society.
Peter Adams
(On behalf of FACES)
