A Labour activist given an MBE for “services to integration” and “cohesion” demanded that Muslims in Rotherham who refused to boycott the police following the town’s grooming scandal should themselves be “boycotted by the Muslim community.”
New footage of Muhbeen Hussain, obtained by GB News, shows him making a fiery speech launching the boycott to a cheering crowd made up almost entirely of men.
He said: “Any Muslim organisation — any, let’s make it better — any Muslim individual or institution in Rotherham that do not adhere to this policy of disengagement will also be boycotted by the Muslim community.”
In a statement headed “Enough of the lies,” Hussain claimed last week that the boycott “had absolutely nothing to do with grooming gangs investigations.”
But at the time he told the BBC it was launched “first and foremost” because the police had pushed a “pernicious lie” that it had not acted on grooming allegations “because of fears of being called racist.”
Hussain’s group, British Muslim Youth, said that this was used to “scapegoat” Muslims for the police’s failures.
South Yorkshire Police has not blamed a fear of being racist for the failure to properly investigate non-recent CSE in Rotherham. The independent reports have cited many, non-justifiable reasons for the failure, and the force has accepted and acted upon these.
Hussain also accused the police of failing to protect Rotherham’s Muslims from far-right demonstrations and violence that had “zapped poison” into the town.
GB NEWS
|Muhbeen Hussain said Muslims who failed to boycott the police following the town’s grooming scandal should themselves be 'boycotted by the Muslim community'
The police boycott was ordered months after 81-year-old Mushin Ahmed was racially abused and murdered in the town after falsely being called a “groomer.” Representatives of Hussain said the boycott was in response to Ahmed's death and Hussain had been unable to mention this to the BBC for legal reasons.
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick said: “Muhbeen Hussain has been caught red handed calling for a Muslim boycott of the police in Rotherham. He should be stripped of his MBE [and] removed from his position on the APPG for British Muslims.
“His pernicious rants set back community cohesion - his award is a sick joke on the British public.”
Hussain’s representatives said Jenrick’s comments were ‘inflammatory’ and pointed out the boycott had occurred ten years earlier in response to Ahmed’s death and his criticisms ignored his long record of community work.
It emerged last week that Hussain was to receive the MBE in the latest Honours List – even though he called on Muslims to break with the force and “take all the necessary action to protect ourselves” in October 2015.
The footage we reveal today shows he went further than previously reported, saying individual Muslims – as well as institutions – must be shunned if they cooperated with police.
In his address to a packed room at Rotherham’s Unity Centre, Hussain added: “If anybody from the Muslim community does not bring in this policy, we boycott them too…. Let the echo [be heard] in South Yorkshire Police…. We will boycott them, we will not engage with them… And if they want to know what this is, this is democracy.”
SKY NEWS | Muhbeen Hussain, founder of a British Muslim youth group in the town, received an MBEHussain’s speech was delivered within a year of the then-Home Secretary Theresa May finding that “institutionalised political correctness” had affected investigations into grooming gangs in Rotherham.
May’s statement came after the 2014 Alexis Jay report into Rotherham, which found “there was a widespread perception that messages conveyed by some senior people in the council and also the police, were to ‘downplay’ the ethnic dimensions of [child sexual exploitation]”.
Closing his speech at Rotherham’s Unity Centre, the activist said: “We’ve already condemned child sexual exploitation, this isn’t a Muslim community saying we’re going to let criminals go.”
He added: “On CSE, where we want free and fair arrest and justice to be given, we want free and fair justice to be given to our community.”
Hussain led a demonstration calling for justice outside Rotherham Town Hall after the town’s CSE scandal came to light.
In a statement after he called off the boycott, he said that it was due to the “incompetent engagement policy used by South Yorkshire Police.”
Representatives of Hussain claimed he had later clarified the boycott was only targeting organisations and not individuals as he had earlier said. Hussain said on X yesterday that the boycott had “never” targeted individuals and was “purely in terms of dialogue, communication and engagement” with South Yorkshire Police, noting it did not prevent crimes from being reported.
Hussain’s MBE for “political services to integration cohesion and to British society” was announced last month.
In a statement, Hussain said: “The peaceful boycott in 2015 related to a specific issue between the police and the Muslim community in the wake of a brutal murder. My record in countering extremism and terrorism from the age of 14, which has included speaking out unequivocally against grooming gangs including those who are men of Pakistani origin, leading the first demonstration against such criminals, and working to break barriers between intra-faith and inter-faith communities, speaks for itself.
“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. I look forward to continuing to work on community cohesion and interfaith understanding going forward.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for South Yorkshire Police said: "The failure to properly investigate CSE in Rotherham in the early 2000s came to light, SYP has not sought to justify the failure to protect victims and survivors or to pursue those who abused them.
"Rather, the force has accepted the findings of Professor Alexis Jay, Baroness Louise Casey, and others and undertaken significant work to improve our prevention of and response to these devastating crimes.
"SYP is now a force which aims to provide a victim-centred suspect-focussed service, which is reflective of best practice and, crucially, operates without fear or favour."
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